
Glass _LJ3.1B-U. 
BookJaLS. 



PRESENTED BY" 




TRAINING DEPARTMENTS 

In 

STATE NORMAL SCHOOLS 

In the United States 



By 

LESTER M. WILSON 
it 



Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the 
requirements for the Degree of Doctor of 
Philosophy in the Faculty of Philosophy, 
Columbia University 



Published by 

THE EASTERN ILLINOIS STATE NORMAL SCHOOL 

Charleston 



[Printed by authority of the State of Illinois.] 



LlUO^ 



.W 5 



Springfield, III. 

Illinois State Journal Co., State Printers. 

1920 

35525—1500 



u&asteceit? 






CONTENTS. 

PAGE. 

SECTION I. Introduction 5 

Participation in the vocation being learned as a feature of vocational 

education in general 5 

The principle applied to preparation of teachers 9 

Studies to determine the value of training school work 11 

SECTION II. Training Facilities and the Organization of Training Departments 18 

Arrangements under which public schools are used for training 18 

Ideal facilities for training purposes 20 

Why public schools are not more generally used for training purposes ... 22 

Methods of supervision 23 

Standards for training facilities 24 

SECTION III. The Nature and Amount of Students' Contact with the Training Depart- 
ment 28 

Analysis of contact provided for in schools studied 29 

Summary and analysis of the facts found 38 

Time spent by students in preparation for practice teaching 44 

Conclusions 49 

SECTION IV. Participation by Normal School Teachers in the work of the Training De- 
partment and by the Training School Staff in the Work of Other 

Normal School Departments 51 

Necessity for such participation 51 

Summary of Types of Cooperation 53 

Analysis of facts found 55 

Suggested application of types of student contact and cooperative effort 
found, to selected curricula 66 

SECTION V. How Training Departments Try to Teach Students to Teach 79 

Lesson plans 81 

Conferences 85 

SECTION VI. The Guiding Purposes of Training Departments 91 

As indicated by statements of aims 91 

Determined from standards used in judging teaching merit of student 

teachers 93 

Analysis of teaching merit based upon score cards used by training 

schools 99 

Analysis of teaching merit based upon data collected from critic teachers . .106 

SECTION VII. Summary 113 



TRAINING DEPARTMENTS IN STATE NORMAL 
SCHOOLS IN THE UNITED STATES. 

I. 

Introduction. 

In common with other forms of vocational education the pre- 
paration of teachers requires a curriculum made up of subjects of 
study which will contribute to the development of the desired skill, 
and for the exercise, under supervision, of the skill in question. 
Vocations differ among themselves in the definiteness of the skill 
involved. In some vocations the conditions under which the skill 
is to be exercised are relatively fixed and can be so definitely fore- 
seen that the skill can be made effective by being highly mechan- 
ized through training. In others the conditions to be met are so 
variable, so impossible to foresee in detail, that the skill in a large 
measure cannot be mechanized and the preparation for the voca- 
tion consists not in definite training but in education which is 
designed to prepare the individual to meet and to deal intelligently 
with variable conditions in the field of his vocation. 

The vocations commonly called professions involve some situ- 
ations which may be prepared for in the first way; they involve 
more which can be prepared for only in the second. Preparation 
for these professions consists in gaining the wide range of knowl- 
edge germane to the problems of the vocation, and practice in the 
application of this knowledge to concrete situations. The purpose 
of both is (1st) to train the novice in technique through doing in 
the practice period certain things which will be duplicated in later 
actual exercise of the vocation, and (2nd) to develop resourceful- 
ness in applying technical knowledge to concrete situations, and 
exercise which, it is hoped, will prepare him to meet new conditions 
similar in only a general way to the conditions encountered during 
the practice period. 



Whatever may be the level upon which vocational skill is to 
be exercised, vocational education must be organized about oppor- 
tunities for the exercise of that skill. The weakness of existing 
agencies for vocational education, Dr. Snedden believes, lies in the 
lack of facilities for giving opportunity for participation in the 
activities of the vocations. He says i 1 

"Modern experience as well as theory tends to demonstrate that 
vocational education which ignores or slights this phase of prac- 
tical training is largely futile. Furthermore, the same experience 
seems to indicate that the concrete and practical must not follow 
at a considerable distance technical and general vocational subjects 
but rather accomapny and in many cases precede the same. 
* * * So far as the rank and file of students is concerned it 
is increasingly evident that the more abstract studies, when not 
intimately correlated with concrete practice, fail to work out into 
the results expected. * * * It is furthermore becoming more 
and more evident that the technical subjects, such as mathematics, 
drawing, physical science, art and the rest, have a genuine func- 
tional value in vocational education only when they are closely 
integrated with the educational results acquired through participa- 
tion in the productive processes themselves. It is probably psy- 
chologically true that, for the average person, the study of these 
applied arts and sciences, quite apart from and anterior to any 
participation in the productive processes, is futile and unproduc- 
tive so far as vocational efficiency is concerned. Nothing can be 
more certain, however, than that the study of these same subjects, 
in close relation with the productive processes tends to expand 
rapidly the capacity of the worker. We may then base on these 
considerations a tentative theory of vocational education. 

"When the time arrives in the development of the boy or girl 
when he should seriously undertake preparation for a calling, it 
is necessary that somehow and somewhere he should be able to de- 
vote a considerable time to actual participation in the concrete 
processes of the calling itself. * * * Having thus come into 
contact with reality, he should have time set apart in which to 
study the more theoretical aspects of the calling. Here again, 
however, a sound theory would seem to require that mathematics, 
science, art, history and other related subjects should not require 
such an order of presentation as to detach them from the experi- 
ence of the young worker. This has undoubtedly been the vice 

1 David Snedden — The problem of "Vocational Education, pp. 27ff. 



of a great deal of the technical study carried on in the schools for 
the purpose of supplemental education." 

The necessity for the organization of vocational education 
about actual participation in the concrete processes of the vocation 
has been recognized in the provisions of the Smith-Hughes act 
furnishing federal aid for vocational education. Section 11 pro- 
vides that for persons not already employed in the exercise of their 
vocation at least one-half of the instruction given under the pro- 
visions of the act shall be given to practical work on a useful or 
productive basis. In answer to the question, "What is the policy 
of the board toward the provision in section 9 for 'Well rounded 
courses of study 5 ?" the Federal Board for Vocational Education 
replied r 1 

"The act requires that a specified time be devoted in day schools 
to practical work. In addition, time sufficient for proper teach- 
ing must be given to instruction in related or technical subjects 
which are also vocational. The remaining time should be given to 
non-vocational subjects 'necessary to build a well-rounded course of 
instruction'. 

"While not making at this time a definite and final ruling, 
the board points out that the experience in vocational education 
in agriculture and in trades and industries gained in this country 
during the last ten years has established the following as the pre- 
vailing practice : 

"(a) In day industrial or trade schools at least one-half the 
time is given to practical work on a useful or productive basis. 

"(b) From 30 to 35 per cent of the time in such schools is 
given to related studies like mathematics, drawing and science. 

"(c) The remainder of the time (15 to 20 per cent) is given 
to such subjects as English, civics, hygiene and history. 

"(d) In day agricultural schools one-half of the time is given 
to such subjects as agronomy, soil physics, animal husbandry, etc.. 
including required, supervised practice in agriculture. 

"(e) The remaining half of the time in such schools is given 
to non-vocational subjects." 

In the preparation of physicians and surgeons the last two 
years of four-year curricula are given almost entirely to clinical 
and hospital experiences. The most serious defect found in medi- 
cal schools in the United States by Flexner in his investigation of 

1 Second Annual report of the Federal Board for Vocational Education, 
p. 128. 



these schools in 1910 was the inadequacy of clinical and hospital 
facilities and the failure to make adequate use of the facilities 
even then available. The report of this investigation includes the 
following statements : 

"On the pedagogical side, modern medicine, like all scientific 
teaching, is characterized by activity. The student no longer 
merely watches, listens, memorizes; he does. His own activities 
in the laboratory and in the clinic are the main factors in his 
instruction and discipline. An education in medicine nowadays 
involves both learning and learning how ; the student cannot effec- 
tively know- unless he knows how." 1 

"Clinical teaching has had substantially the same history as 
anatomical teaching. It was first didactic; the student was told 
what he would find and what to do when he found it. It was 
next demonstrative; things were pointed out in the ampitheater 
or the wards, those who got front seats seeing them more or less 
well. Latterly it has become scientific ; the student brings his own 
faculties into play at close range — gathering his own data, making 
his own constructions, proposing his own course, and taking the 
consequences when the instructor who has worked through exact- 
ly the same process calls him to account; the instructor no longer 
a fountain pouring forth a full stream of knowledge, nor a show- 
man exhibiting marvelous sights, but by turns an aid or an an- 
tagonist in a strenuous conflict with disease." 2 

"It is a nice question as to how the student's time in the 
third and fourth years is to be apportioned between patient work, 
ward work, demonstrative and class exercises, and didactic lectures. 
* * * The principle upon which division may be made has 
been, however, very clearly stated by Cabot and Locke. 'Learning 
medicine is not fundamentally different from learning anything 
else. If one had one hundred hours in which to learn to ride a 
horse or to speak in public, one might profitably spend perhaps 
an hour (in divided doses) in being told how to do it, four hours 
in watching a teacher do it, and the remaining ninety-five hours 
in practice,, at first with close supervision, later under general 
oversight'." 3 

In the professional preparation of engineers the present ten- 
dency is toward a reduction of emphasis upon shop and field 
technique and an increase of emphasis upon the managerial and 

1 Bulletin Number Four, Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of 
Teaching, p. 53. 

2 Ibid, p. 93. 

3 Ibid, p. 99. 



executive aspects of the profession, involving a corresponding 

change in the type of practical experience which the engineering 

schools must furnish. But there is no disposition to decrease the 

amount of practical experience. In its report to the conference of 

the British Institute of Civil Engineers on education and training 

of engineers, the committee said: 

"No man can be considered fit to take part in the design as well as 
the control and direction of engineering works, unless there is added 
to competent scientific knowledge a thorough practical training under 
actual engineering conditions." 1 

This principle, that active participation in the vocation being 
learned is the characteristic feature of professional preparation 
for the exercise of a vocation, shown by theory and by experience 
to be valid in other fields of vocational education, has been found 
to be equally applicable to the professional preparation of teachers 
for American public schools. 

That its validity has been accepted in practice is indicated 
by the fact that a training department is maintained by every 
state normal school in the United States and by a considerable 
number of private normal schools. It is indicated by the fact that 
training schools have been organized and arrangements for the use 
of public schools as training schools have been made by many col- 
leges and universities which undertake to prepare teachers. 

Persons responsible for teacher preparation have gone on 
record repeatedly as believing in the importance of the training 
department. 

At the winter session of the National Education Association 
in 1899 a committee appointed in 1895 to investigate teacher train- 
ing made its report to the Normal School department. In the 
report appear the following sentences : 

"The training school should be the correlating center of the 
normal school; the curriculum of the training school should di- 
rectly influence that of the normal school/' 2 

"In comparison with other lines of work in the normal school, 
actual teaching is capable of ranking as the most valuable course, 
for the student." 3 



1 Nature, July 13, 1911, p. 49. 

2 N. E. A. Addresses and Proceedings, 1899, p. 852. 

3 Ibid, p. 846. 



10 

The progress made by this idea in the minds of normal school 
administrators and teachers in the course of the ten years follow- 
ing is indicated by the following quotations from an address made 
before the Normal School department of the 1ST. E. A. in 1909 by 
C. B. Eobertson r 1 

"The progress [made by normal schools] which has been most 
marked, it seems to me, is the increasing appreciation in which 
the training departments are held. They are coming into a posi- 
tion of authority and power because their place, function, and 
value have been shown. 

"There is no longer any question in the minds of those com- 
petent to judge, that the place of the training department is 
pivotal ; it is the hub from which should radiate all the activities 
of the other departments.'" 

In 1914 the same idea was reaffirmed by at least three speakers 
at the meeting of the Normal School department. W. T. Carring- 
ton, then president of the State Normal School at Springfield, 
Missouri, said: 2 

"We consider the training school work the most important 
work of the normal school and one of the most difficult to handle.'' 

President John W. Cook of the Northern Illinois State Normal 
School said: 3 

"The position of [director of training] is second alone in im- 
portance to that of head of the school, if it is not, indeed, superior 
to it. The practice school is peculiarly the center of the situation. 
In a very true sense, the normal school should be built around the 
practice school." 

President David Felmley of the Illinois State Normal Uni- 
versity, said: 4 

"Where the training school is closely connected with the 
normal school, where the normal school departments write its 
course of study and give continuous attention to its work, where 
the normal school instructors have themselves had experience as 
public school teachers and see the children beyond the inchoate 
teachers on the benches in front of them, the training school im- 
parts to the work of the whole institution a vigor and vitality 
which can be obtained in no other way/' 

1 N. E. A. Addresses and Proceedings, 1909, p. 561. 

2 N. E. A. Addresses and Proceedings, 1914, p. 537. 

3 Ibid, p. 542. 

* N. E. A. Addresses and Proceedings, 1914, p. 504. 



11 

Among the theses "fundamental to the organization and ad- 
ministration of the suggested curricula" which preface the pro- 
visional "Curricula Designed for the Training of Teachers for 
American Public Schools/' issued by the Carnegie Foundation in 
1917, appears the following: 1 

"The organization of a teacher training college should repre- 
sent a thoroughgoing integration of all courses around actual work 
of teaching as a center. To this end the training department 
should be the central department of the college, and all courses in 
the institution should be correlated as closely as possible with the 
work in observation and practice teaching." 

In the report of the committee of the National Council of 
Normal School Presidents and Principals, on Normal School 
Standards and Surveys, the assertion is made : 2 

"The training school is the heart of the normal school. Around 
it and for it is everything else builded and ordered, for in and 
through the training school is exemplified the idea of education 
for which the normal school stands and in and through the train- 
ing school the student's ideals, knowledge and teaching skill are 
brought into concrete reality." 

In an article on "Practice Teaching in State Normal Schools" 
fm, A. Wilkinson says: 3 

"It is a well established principle of vocational pedagogy 
that the best method of imparting both skill and technical knowl- 
edge needed in any occupation is through actual participation by 
the candidate in the vocation being learned. If the normal school 
accepts this principle, then it must make practice teaching the 
heart and core of its professional work." 

Such quantitative studies as have been made to determine the 
value of the student's experience in the training department of the 
normal school contribute to the certainty that this principle of 
vocational education, participation in the processes of the vocation 
being learned, is valid in the field of teacher preparation. 

Meriam 4 found a correlation of -f- .443 between success in 
practice teaching as indicated by grades received by student teach- 



1 Curricula Designed for the Professional Preparation of Teachers for 
American Public Schools — Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of 
Teaching, 1917, Thesis 8. 

2 Educational Administration and Supervision, March, 1918, p. 166. 

3 Educational Administration and Supervision, June J 1918, p. 290. 

4 J. L. Meriam ; Normal School Education and Teaching Efficiency, 
1905. 



12 

ers, and the teaching success of the same persons as indicated by 
the judgment of the principal of the normal school from which 
each had graduated. This correlation shows that practice teaching 
success is a fair index to probable success in later teaching, if it is 
allowed that the measurements of the two facts used in the study 
are adequate measures. It does not prove that practice teaching 
contributed largely to later teaching success, since it may be urged 
that the same preparation and native ability which contributed to 
success in one situation had a similar influence upon success in the 
second similar situation, independently of exercise of that prepar- 
ation and native ability in the practice school. A positive correla- 
tion was found between other work done in the normal school and 
both practice teaching and public school teaching, the coefficient 
being somewhat lower in the second case. Meriam's own conclusion 
from the facts found is : 

"The various subjects seem to contribute much to efficiency 
in practice teaching but considerably less to actual teaching; but 
the correlation between practice teaching and actual teaching is 
again comparatively high. This means that there is an element in 
the former that contributes directly to the latter. * * * School 
work is not so closely related to the work the teacher is later called 
upon to do as it should be. Practice teaching is more closely 
related to it than are the theoretical studies. * * * The sig- 
nificance of this is that more practice teaching is needed in train- 
ing teachers." 

A study of the value of practice teaching in training teachers 
for secondary schools has been made by H. G. Childs. Information 
of two sorts was collected. Nineteen city superintendents reported 
upon as many teachers who had done practice teaching as a part of 
their preparation. The summary of these reports is :* 

"Ten of the 19 teachers were decidedly above the average of 
all teachers in the teaching staff; 17 of the 19 were equal to or 
above the average for all; but two were below the average and 
none were reported unsatisfactory. The comparison with other 
teachers with no previous teaching experience is still more striking; 
as 14 of the 19 were rated decidedly above the average; only one 
was rated below the average and none were rated as unsatisfac- 
tory.'* 

* Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1917, No. 29, p. 35. 



13 

The second type of information collected came from the re- 
ports of 79 teachers who had done practice teaching as to the 
value of practice teaching a preparation for later teaching. Sixty- 
nine of these reported that it had much value; eight that it had 
moderate value ; two that it had little value. 1 

The second study seems to be more trustworthy than the first, 
since no report is given in the first as to what training, in other 
respects than practice teaching, had been given to the persons with 
whom the group considered was compared, and there was available 
for comparison no control group made up of persons of comparable 
ability and training equivalent excepting for the omission of prac- 
tice teaching. In the second case the only persons who could evalu- 
ate the contribution made to teaching ability by practice teaching 
were consulted, namely the persons who had done the practice 
teaching. 

Data comparable with those used in the second of these two 
studies just cited were collected from elementary school teachers 
in the course of the present study. 

Fifty-two normal school graduates, experienced as elementary 
school teachers, each distributed 100 points among the following 
factors : 

1. Academic courses. 

2. Professional courses. 

'3. Observation of teaching. 

4. Practice teaching. 

The points were assigned to the four sorts of work in the pro- 
portion which the person making the distribution believed that each 
had contributed to the preparation for teaching which he had re- 
ceived in the normal school attended. These 52 persons included 
graduates from 28 schools in 14 states. The median teaching ex- 
perience was 8 years. All had done or were doing, advanced work 
in preparation for teaching. 

^bid, p. 34. 



14 

The following distribution shows the nature of the reports : 

Median value Range of dis- Average 

assigned. tribution. deviation. 

1. Academic courses 27.5 — 70 11.2 

2. Professional courses 22.5 — 60 8.7 

3. Observation 12.5 0—35 7.2 

4. Practice teaching 35 5 — 75 6.4 

The higher median together with the lower average deviation 
for the estimates of the value of practice teaching as compared 
with the value of the other factors, indicates some agreement that 
practice teaching has a rather high value in preparation for teach- 
ing. 

The high average deviations in all four cases seem to indicate 
two things : 

(1) A wide difference in the value of the four sorts of work 
as they are administered in different schools. This is confirmed 
by the remarks added to the reports in certain cases. One of the 
four graduates from a certain state normal school who were among 
the 52 persons, rated the four factors 20, 60, 10, 10 respectively 
and said: "This particular school was strong in its professional 
work but formal and rigid in its practice department." A graduate 
from another state normal school, rating the four factors 10, 0, 20, 
70 respectively, said: "The practice teaching was the only work 
which seemed to me to be vitally connected with preparation for 
teaching." A graduate from a third State Normal School rating 
the factors 10, 20, 20, 50, said: "I had the A. B. degree when 
I entered the normal school. Practice teaching was done in city 
schools under real, everyday conditions." 

(2) The large deviations indicate a difference in the needs 
which different persons feel upon entering a normal school. The 
last quotation given above illustrates this, as does the following 
from another graduate from the first school mentioned, who rated 
the four factors 60, 5, 15, 20 respectively: "Points 2, 3 and 4 
would have been valueless without 1. Not worth 40 points stand- 
ing alone." A graduate from a fifth State Normal School rating 
the factors 35, 15, 15, 35, said: "It is hard to decide between 
academic work and teaching; I was so poorly prepared when I 
went to the Normal School that I needed the first badly but the 



15 

practice teaching made what I learned useful as ■ preparation for 
teaching." 

A study has been made at the State Normal School, Winona, 
Minnesota, to determine how graduates of that school estimate the 
value of different parts of the curriculum. The following quotation 
indicates the nature of the investigation and its results : x 

"In order to determine the relative values which graduates 
of the school attach to different subjects or aspects of the curricu- 
lum, some 40 women graduates of from six to ten years experi- 
ence and whose judgment was thoroly dependable were written to 
(37 responded) as follows: 

'Indicate by numerals below your greatest lack when you 
began teaching, marking your greatest lack number 1, next 2. 
etc., in the following respects: 

'Academic knowledge in the branches you were teaching. 

'Mastery of methods of teaching. 

'General scholarship. 

'Practical school management/ 
The numbers by which the graduates indicated the rank of 
each of the four items were added. * * * The smaller the 
sum for any of the four aspects, therefore, the greater the lack. 
The general rankings of the sums and the number of first places 
(greatest lack) assigned each of the four aspects are as follows: 

Sum of ranks. No. of firsts. 

Mastery of methods of teaching 45% 11 

Practical school management 49 13 

General scholarship 72% 2 

Academic knowledge of common branches 79 1 

"Apparently the normal school does best what it is easiest to 
do, viz. : to teach the common branches and to give general scholar- 
ship and should devise means of giving its graduates more free- 
dom and skill in the art of teaching. 

"A second request was : 'Check twice the subjects which you 
regard as especially valuable and check once the subjects which 
have considerable value in the required subjects of study as given 
below' (the subjects being listed). The sums of the check marks 
for the subjects indicate their relative importance in the minds 
of graduates replying, and are as follows : 

1 The Winona Normal Bulletin, Feb., 1917, pp. 291-2. 



16 

Teaching 1 53 Sociology 41 

Teaching II 53 Theory of Education 40 

Teaching III 52 Geography 39 

English 49 Penmanship 37 

Reading 43 Psychology II 37 

Arithmetic 42 Drawing 34 

Psychology 1 42 Music 33 

School Management 42 Civics 31 

History U. S 41 History of Education 28 

Literature 41 

The very limited range of possible degrees of lack and of 
value allowed for in this study reduces somewhat the comparative 
value of the figures arrived at, but the returns do show rather 
clearly the high value which the persons consulted attached to the 
experiences afforded by practice teaching and the lack of the sort 
of training which can be best given in connection with practice 
teaching. 

The high relative value of practice teaching shown by all the 
studies made does not warrant the conclusion that more practice 
teaching should be done than is now generally required in teacher 
training institutions. What the studies do indicate is that the 
practice teaching is so important a part of the work in the normal 
school that the training department should be given every facility 
for carrying on its work effectively, and that the normal school as 
a whole should be so organized and its work so conducted that the 
practice work, when undertaken, shall be of the maximum benefit 
to the student. The amount of practice teaching to be done must 
be determined by consideration of this importance in connection 
with the many other factors that govern curriculum making. 

The results of these studies do very definitely confirm the 
opinion of persons engaged in normal school administration, as 
quoted in the preceding pages, that the practice school is the 
department of the normal school about which the curriculum for 
the training of teachers should be organized. 

The purposes of the present study are to find: (1) what the 
training facilities of state normal schools are and how the training 
departments are organized; (2) the amount and nature of the 
students' contact with the training departments; (3) the relation 
of the teachers in other departments of the normal school to the 



17 

work of the training department and trie participation by the 
training school staff in the work of other departments; (4) what 
purposes the training departments propose to accomplish and how 
the training departments are organized and operated to accomplish 
these ends. 

The materials for the study have been collected by correspond- 
ence with normal school presidents, directors of training and critic 
teachers, and by examination of catalogs and bulletins issued by 
normal schools. Only state normal schools have been considered. 
A random selection of one hundred schools was made by selecting 
from the list in the Educational Directory of the Bureau of Edu- 
cation for 1917-18, pages 119 ft, the first school for each state, 
the first and second for each state in which more than one school 
is maintained, and a third school from the states with the largest 
number of schools, to make up the one hundred. Data from a 
fourth school in each of two states are included because" they 
happened to be available. 

Eeplies to the questions asked were received from fifty-four 
schools. Catalogs of all of the schools concerned have been avail- 
able. In each topic discussed in the study, the number of schools 
represented by the data used will be indicated. 



-2 E S N 



18 



II. 

TRAINING FACILITIES AND THE ORGANIZATION 
OF TRAINING DEPARTMENTS. 

Training departments in state normal schools differ from one 
another in three principal ways : ( 1 ) as to whether observation, 
demonstration and practice teaching are done in schools wholly 
under the control of the normal school, or in public schools; 
(2) as to whether separate schools are maintained, one for demon- 
stration teaching and observation, another or others for practice 
teaching; (3) as to whether supervision of practice teachers is 
done (a) by critic teachers who are also teachers of the rooms in 
which practice teaching is done, or (b) by special supervisors, the 
rooms being in charge of regular room teachers who are responsible 
for the school in its relations to the pupils but who have no respon- 
sibility for the work of student teachers. 

These three situations are found in all possible combinations 
excepting that no case has been found among the schools studied 
of two separate schools maintained wholly by the normal school, 
one for observation and demonstration teaching, a second for stu- 
dent teaching. When a model school is maintained, practice teach- 
ing is done in public schools. 

Of seventy-five schools for which the facts could be ascertained, 
forty-two have practice schools established and operated wholly 
under normal school authority ; nine use only city or village schools 
for observation and practice; twenty-four have practice or model 
schools under the control of the normal school and also use public 
schools under cooperative management of normal school and local 
authorities. In six of these twenty-four cases, the school wholly 
controlled by the normal school is used as a school for observation 
and for demonstrational teaching with but little student teaching. 

The arrangements with local school board? under which nor- 



19 

mal schools make use of city schools for practice teaching vary. 
In cases where the normal school is located in a small town the 
normal school may assume control of all elementary education, 
organizing the schools to serve the purposes of the normal school. 
This is true, for example, at G-eneseo, New York, at Plymouth and 
at Keene, New Hampshire, at Framingham, Massachusetts, at 
Dillon, Montana, and at Albion, Idaho. 

In other cases the schools of the town are maintained jointly 
by the normal school and the local community. At Hays, Kansas, 
"By an arrangement with the city of Hays, the city school system is 
used as a pedagogical laboratory for observation, investigation, and 
practice. The professior of education of the normal school is ex officio 
superintendent of the city schools, performing all the functions of that 
office and directing the work of teacher training. The city provides 
all equipment and pays the salaries of all the regular grade and high 
school teachers. The board employs teachers nominated by the super- 
intendent. The services of the superintendent and all special super- 
visors are furnished by the state." 1 

Hays has a population of about 2200. At DeKalb, Illinois, 
a similar arrangement is in force, including the service of the 
director of training of the normal school as city superintendent, 
but not all of the city schools are used as training schools. At 
Greenville, North Carolina, the city superintendent is director of 
practice in the city schools and the county superintendent is di- 
rector of practice in the rural schools. At Ellensburg, Washing- 
ton, 

"The training school is organized with special reference to the needs 
and conditions of the local school system, the class-room teachers being 
under the cooperative oversight of both normal school and city boards 
of trustees." 2 

At Mayville, North Dakota, the normal school pays an additional 
salary to selected teachers in the city schools and to the principals 
of the schools in which these teachers are employed, and both 
teachers and principals cooperate with normal-school supervisors 
in directing practice work. At Providence, Ehode Island, 
"The training schools are established by contract with the local 
authorities. * * * Critic teachers are nominated by the Trustees 
of the Normal School and elected by the School Committees of the 
towns which they serve." 3 



1 Fort Hays, Kansas Normal School, Training- School Bulletin, p. 5. 
2 Ellensburg, Washington, State Normal School Catalog, 1918, p. 13. 
'Rhode Island Normal School Bulletin, May, 1918, p. 25. 



20 

In all but one of the normal schools having their own practice 
schools and using city schools also, the students' first teaching is 
done in the practice school and later a part br all of the students 
are given opportunity for additional practice teaching in the city 
schools. At Duluth, Minnesota, 

"All members of the senior class who are assigned to the Training 
Department for teaching are later assigned to a supervising teacher 
in the city schools for cadet work." 1 

At Providence, Rhode Island, the school of observation 
"furnishes under the most helpful and encouraging conditions an 
opportunity for the young teacher to begin her practice teaching. 
* * * She is well fitted for the next step in her preparation, the 
training school." 2 

At San Diego, California, all students are given their prelimi- 
nary practice teaching in the practice school and the better student 
teachers are then given assignments to city schools. At Emporia, 
Kansas, which is the exception mentioned above, only completely 
inexperienced student teachers are sent to city schools, to gain 
some experience before undertaking practice in the normal school's 
practice schools. At Normal, Illinois, some students do their prac- 
tice teaching in the training school directly connected with the 
normal school; others receive their training in the Soldiers' Orph- 
ans' Home, the school of which is under the supervision of the 
normal school. In the cases of three of the schools studied the 
only opportunity for students to teach in city schools is by serving 
as supply (or substitute) teachers, the opportunity being open to 
those students who have already had public-school experience. 

The most satisfactory arrangement for training school pur- 
poses is probably (1) a school located on the normal school grounds 
and completely under the control of the normal school, where 
demonstration teaching, observation, preliminary participation and 
first practice teaching may be done, together with such educational 
experimentation as can be combined with these activities; this 
(2) supplemented by training facilities in public schools. Either 
one without the other is unsatisfactory. In schools making no 
use of public schools for training purposes, student teachers are 
inadequately prepared to meet the schoolroom conditions of the 



1 Duluth, Minneosta, State Normal School Catalog, 1918, p. 17. 

2 Rhode Island Normal School Bulletin, May, 1918, p. 24. 



21 

public schools which are not duplicated in the practice school or- 
ganized primarily for the purposes of practice teaching. Ten 
directors of training with whom correspondence has been carried 
on in the course of the present study have made unsolicited state- 
ments to the effect that training facilities in the schools with which 
they are connected will be unsatisfactory until arrangements can 
be made for supplementary practice in public schools. On the 
other hand, in normal schools having no conveniently located 
elementary school completely under the control of the normal 
school it is impossible to carry on the observation and preliminary 
participation that should be antecedent to practice, which ought to 
be a feature of the entire normal school course and a feature in 
as many as possible of the courses taken in the normal school in 
all departments. Without such a school close contact in the 
elementary school work and educational experimentation by the 
normal school staff are made less easy. Teacher-training institu- 
tions which have no such school connected with them, or inadequate 
schools, supply the deficiency as soon as funds are available for. 
the purpose. The principal of one training school complains bit- 
terly that the lack of an adequate training school building makes 
it impossible to give more of the practice work in a school wholly 
under the control of the normal school instead of in city schools. 
Another director of training says that practice teaching done in 
schools not wholly under the control of the normal school is prov- 
ing unsatisfactory in the case of beginning teachers. At the Uni- 
versity of Wisconsin, the Madison high school was used for a train- 
ing school only until the University's own school could be built. 
The new high school building at the University of Illinois has just 
been completed, arrangement for use of the local high schools for 
training purposes having been found insufficient and otherwise 
unsatisfactory. 

Only nine of seventy-five normal schools have been found to 
be unsupplied with a practice school wholly under the control of 
the normal school, and in six of these the whole of the city school 
system is completely under the management either of the normal- 
school board of trustees or of the state board of education. Forty- 



22 

two of the schools make no use of public schools for training pur- 
poses. Apparently the most imperative need x f or change in organ- 
ization in training departments, therefore, is a change which will 
make more general the use of public schools for supplementary 
practice teaching. 

That so many normal schools do not use public schools for 
training purposes is doubtless due, first, to the failure of persons 
responsible for the administration of the schools to realize the 
necessity for such public school experience as a part of the prepar- 
ation of teachers for the public schools. It is due, secondly and 
probably more frequently, to the unwillingness of local communi- 
ties to open their schools to normal-school students for practice 
purposes. In cases where the local school boards are willing to 
have schools used for training purposes, normal-school boards and 
principals hesitate to avail themselves of the opportunity, fearing 
that the attitude of the community at large, of a new board, or of 
a new superintendent may make the arrangement inoperative after 
it has been undertaken, and that, in consequence, the work of the 
training department will sooner or later be disturbed. 

In attempting to secure the use of public schools of its com- 
munity for training purposes, a normal school which already has 
a practice school of its own may safely advance the following argu- 
ments : 

1. That so far as the training of the student teachers is con- 
cerned, they will have had, before doing any teaching in the public 
schools, more preparation and experience than have eight out of 
ten of the persons who now enter the teaching profession each year. 

2. That a large part of the teaching will be done by critic 
teachers, supervisors, normal-school subject-matter specialists and 
carefully selected room teachers. Because the normal school will 
supplement local funds available for teachers' salaries, the last 
named group will comprise more expert teachers than the com- 
munity could hope otherwise to afford. 

3. That all of the work of the schools, particularly that of 
the student teachers, will be supervised with a care which the com- 
munity alone could not provide for. 



23 

4. That the educational welfare of the community will be 
under the direct care of the normal school faculty, made up of 
persons who are specialists in the field of education. 

Useful material for convincing the people of a community 
of the advantage to them of such a cooperative arrangement can 
be obtained from the statement by Dr. C. A. MeMurry in the May, 
1915, Northern Illinois State Normal School Quarterly, 1 and from 
the results of tests given in the training school at Madison, South 
Dakota, published in the Training School Bulletin of that school 
for July, 1918. 

It is unwise to make any promises that the arrangement will 
result in any saving to the community in school taxes. It should 
be understood that state funds are to be used to raise the quality 
of the schools, not to decrease their cost to the town, and the com- 
munity should enter into the agreement with that understanding. 
If it is to be permanent, the arrangement should be favored by 
the community as a whole and not simply consented to by the 
board of education; otherwise a change in the personnel of the 
board might easily jeopardize the arrangement. 

The data obtained give no basis for choice between super- 
vision of practice teaching by critic teachers who have direct re- 
sponsibility for the instruction of pupils when student teachers 
are not in charge on the one hand, and supervision by special 
supervisors with room teachers in charge of each group of children 
on the other hand. Both systems are found in schools of all sizes, 
but it is interesting to note that the larger schools use predomi- 
nantly the latter method while the smaller schools use the former. 

Other things being equal, the supervision of young teachers 
is probably more effective when done by one who is, himself or 
herself, a teacher of children. Bureaucratic supervision is prob- 
ably less effective and certainly less desirable than cooperative 
supervision. City school systems with highly centralized and 
specialized systems of supervision are centers of unrest among 
teachers who find the supervising oppressive rather than helpful. 
The New Jersey name, "Helping Teachers," for supervisors of 

1 Published by the Northern Illinois State Normal School, DeKalb, 
Illinois. 



24 

rural teaching is a happy term and the situation is a fortunate 
one if the name is truly descriptive. When the children of a given 
grade are taught for a part of the time by student teachers and a 
part of the time by the critic teacher who supervises those students, 
the teaching can be given greater continuity than when the room 
teacher takes no part in the direction of student teachers. Di- 
vided authority in the conduct of a schoolroom may easily become 
a source of friction, and as such is to be avoided so far as possible. 
The administrative plan suggested by the Carnegie Foundation 1 
provides for no supervision by persons who are not also teachers 
of children. 

The considerations which lead to the use of supervisors and 
room teachers are: 

1. The teaching load of a critic teacher who has full respon- 
sibility both for a group of pupils and for as many student teach- 
ers as must ordinarily be accommodated in one room is very heavy ; 
entirely too heavy if more than five or six student teachers must 
be supervised at one time. Long hours are made necessary to give 
time for conferences with student teachers. 

2. If the number of student teachers assigned to one room 
be made sufficiently small, the number of rooms used for practice 
teaching must be correspondingly large, and the expense of em- 
ploying so many room teachers who are also competent critic teach- 
ers becomes very great, ever assuming that a sufficient number of 
such competent teachers are available which is not often true. 

Only the enlargement of practice facilities can meet these 
difficulties, with such increased appropriations as will make pos- 
sible a large critic staff and make possible the offering of salaries 
which will attract competent persons to the business of critic teach- 
ing. 

Standards for the number of pupils to be enrolled in the train- 
ing schools in proportion to the number of student teachers have 
been worked out by Bagley and by Judd and Parker. Bagley 

1 Curricula Designed for the Professional Preparation of Teachers for 
American Public Schools — Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of 
Teaching, 1917. 



25 

15 s c m 4 

proposes the formula: n = 1.30 . ■ , 

t 3 

in which n is the proper enrollment in the practice school; s, the 
number of student teachers to be accommodated during the school 
year; c, the number of recitation units during which the student 
teacher is in charge each week; t, the number of recitation units 
in the training school classes per week; m, the fraction of the 
total school year during which teaching is required. This formula 
is based upon the principle that in no case should more than three- 
fourths of the work of training-school pupils be in direct charge 
of student teachers. Bagley strongly recommends that this pro- 
portion be reduced to one-half. 

The standard suggested by Judd and Parker 1 is that in a 
training school where two-thirds of the teaching is done by student 
teachers, each group of twenty children will accommodate two- 
thirds times four to nine practice teachers ; that in a public school 
where one-half of the teaching is done by student teachers, each 
group of forty children will accommodate one-half times four to 
nine practice teachers annually. 

On the basis of data gathered from sixty-eight normal schools 
Kelly and Scott 2 make the following summary: 

"The institution giving about the median amount of emphasis to 
training school work is one which, 
"1. Has about 1.6 times as many students in grades 13 and 14 as in 

grades 1 to 8; 
"2. Has about 2.2 times as many children in the training school as 

students teaching during the year; 
"3. Has about five and a half times as many members in the entire 

faculty as in the training school faculty; and 
"4. Requires about one hundred sixty hours of student teaching for 
graduation." 

It is very difficult to get all of the items of information neces- 
sary for the application of Dr. Bagley's formula, but from the 
figures given in the report of the Commissioner of Education and 
from data given in catalogs it has been possible, by assuming that 
the number of recitation units in the training school each week 

1 C. H. Judd and S. C. Parker "Normal School Standards," Bui. No. 12, 
U. S. Bur., Ed. 1916. 

2 Educational Administration and Supervision, 1915, Vol. 1, p. 591. 



26 

is forty (Bagley suggests that it will ordinarily be thirty) to esti- 
mate the adequacy of the training school enrollment in fourteen of 
the forty-two schools studied, having all practice teaching done in 
their own training schools. In only three of these fourteen schools 
is the number of pupils enrolled in the training school as reported 
to the Commissioner of Education in 1917 as large as the figure 
resulting from the application of the formula. In three cases the 
number actually enrolled was less than one-half of the theoretical- 
ly proper number. This fact, together with the fact that four- 
teen is the median number of children in a group 'taught by student 
teachers as reported by twenty-two schools not making use of 
public schools for practice teaching, indicates that there is a de- 
ficiency on the side of quantity as will as of quality in the training 
facilities of schools not making use of public schools for training 
purposes. 

Such a lack of sufficient practice facilities was reported by 
Judd and Parker in 1916. They report 1 : 

"As a matter of fact, many of the normal schools do not 
actually enjoy such facilities as would be indicated by these theo- 
retical calculations, owing to the fact that they have training 
schools with relatively few children, or they have not succeeded 
in making arrangements whereby they can utilize half of the time 
in the public schools for practice-teaching purposes." 

An item of major importance in the organization of the train- 
ing department is the provision for associating with that organ- 
ization members of other normal school departments, especially 
of the department of education. The usefulness of the training 
department depends in large measure upon the use made of its 
facilities by the whole normal school staff, but the extent of this 
use depends rather upon the disposition or attitude of the teach- 
ers concerned than upon details of organization. In one school 
the organization of which shows close organized relationship be- 
tween the department of education and the training department, 
— the same man being head of both, — a personal visit showed that 
the relationship was far from close; indeed, the nominal head of 
the training school, by his own statement, had not been in the 

1 Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1916, No. 12, p. 55. 



27 

training school building for some weeks until he accompanied the 
visitor there. It is only fair to add that a change has been made 
which transfers this teacher to other work and places a new man 
at the head of the training department. The supervisor of train- 
ing in another school says: 

"Of all departments, that of education is hardest to cooperate 
with, chiefly because their criticism has been destructive, generally, 
rather than constructive." 

The nature and extent of actual and possible integration of 
training school work and work of other normal school departments 
is discussed in detail in Section IV. Section III will describe the 
use which is made of existing training facilities as indicated by 
the amount and nature of students' contact with the training de- 
partment. 



28 



III. 

THE NATURE AND AMOUNT OF STUDENTS' CONTACT 
WITH THE TRAINING DEPARTMENT. 

If the work of the normal school is to be completely profes- 
sionalized, the students in the normal school should be in very defi- 
nite contact throughout their entire course, with schools similar 
to those in which they the preparing to teach. Every principle of 
vocational education to which we have already referred implies 
that the curriculum should provide for such contact from the very 
beginning. 

This assumption is supported by the emphasis which persons 
engaged in normal school work have placed upon the importance 
of the training department as indicated in the preceding sections. 
It is the assumption upon which the "Curricula Designed for the 
Professional Preparation of Teachers for American Public Schools" 
provisionally suggested by the Carnegie Foundation, are con- 
structed. Section 10 of the theses Avhich preface these curricula 
says: 

"Observation of class work and participation in the activities of the 
training school should be required from the earliest practicable mo- 
ment." 

The proposed curricula put this earliest practicable moment at the 
beginning of the first term, in connection with the course "Intro- 
duction to teaching" which is. common to all the curricula. The 
description of this course includes the statement : 
"* * * Instruction should be correlated with numerous visits to the 
respective departments of the practice school." 

It is the purpose of the present section to discover by analysis 
of curricula and of courses, supplemented by statements from 
persons connected with the schools concerned, what the varieties 
of contact are which the normal school student now has with the 
training department. So far as is possible, the amount of such 



29 

contact is indicated as well, but as Judd and Parker pointed out 
in 1916, it is impossible to make, from published data, any accu- 
rate estimates, either of the total amount of work required for 
graduation in many schools, or of the amount of credit assigned 
to any given subject of the curriculum. To make a quantitative 
comparison of schools in the present study would be additionally 
difficult since the contact with the training school which is inci- 
dental to the normal school courses in methods, psychology, and 
similar subjects, can be indicated simply in the two degrees, 
"present" or "absent", and varies widely in amount in different 
cases. There may also be contacts with the training school in 
connection with courses the catalog description of which gives no 
indication of such contact, since these descriptions vary widely 
in their completeness for different courses within the same school 
and even more widely as between schools. 

Wherever possible in the analyses the total amount of credit 
required for graduation is indicated and the amount of credit 
assigned to courses which clearly involve constant contact with 
the training department. The amount of credit given to courses 
which involve some undeterminable amount of contact with the 
training school is also indicated but has low value as an index 
to the amount of contact involved. It will be unwise to attempt, 
from the figures given, to make comparisons of one school with 
others as to the amount of contact. The comparison which can 
be made is as to the varieties of contact afforded. 

The data from catalogs come from those published during the 

spring and summer of 1918. The data from letters were gathered 

during February and March, 1919. 

Analysis of the kinds of contact which students in normal schools have 

with the training department; with such indices of the 

amount of contact as the data make possible. 

CALIFORNIA. 

Fresno. 

Practice teaching: 12 weeks, one period a day in training school con- 
nected with normal school; 12 weeks, half day; in city schools for 
better prepared, in training school for others. 

Observation: Approximately 20 lessons in connection with work in 
principles of teaching; one-half given by supervising teachers; 
one-half, observation of student teachers. 



30 

Other Contact: Students supervise playground activities of training 
school children before undertaking practice. x 

San Diego. 

Practice teaching: Total of 300 hours; in single periods in training 

school connected with normal school, 180 hours; whole or half 

day teaching in city schools, 120 hours. 
Observation: Special course of 60 hours. 

GEORGIA. 

Athens. — Four year course only. 

Practice teaching: 4 45-minute periods a week for four months, in 
school connected with normal school. In fourth year. 

Observation: In connection with general methods course (2 points 
required) ; in connection with course in teaching of literature (2 
points required) ; in connection with course in methods and man- 
agement (3 points required). 

IDAHO. 

Albion. 

Practice teaching: 36 weeks, one hour a day, in city schools. 

Observation: One term, one hour a day; demonstration lessons given 
by critic teachers for normal school teachers who wish to have 
lessons seen in connection with courses given; some observation 
carried on in connection with a course in elementary education, 
preceding practice teaching. 

Lewiston. 

Practice teaching: 36 weeks, 1 period a day in school connected with 

normal school; some practice teaching in city schools in manual 

training, home economics and physical education. 
Observation: In connection with courses in psychology, teachers 

courses in English, arithmetic, geography, science and history, 

primary methods, junior high school methods. 

ILLINOIS. 

Carbondale. 

Practice teaching: Three terms, one hour a day in school connected 

with normal school. 
Observation: In connection with practice teaching. 

Charleston. 

Total credits for graduation 10. 

Practice teaching: 1 credit (10%). 1 hour a day one year in school 
connected with normal school. 

Observation: In connection with psychology (1 credit required); in 
connection with course in reading (2/5 credit, required); "The 
training teachers * * * teach special lessons for observation 
by classes in methods in special subjects in the normal school 
proper." Catalog, p. 54. 



31 

Macomb. 

Total credits for graduation 26. 

Practice teaching: 3 credits (11.5%). 1 period a day for 3 terms. 
One term in Junior year; two terms in Senior year; both in prac- 
tice school connected with normal school. 

Observation: In connection with principles of teaching (1 hour, 
required). In connection with 1 hour required courses in arith- 
metic, English, geography, history, drawing, all in Junior year; 
in connection with 1 hour elective courses in household arts and 
manual training. In connection with course in class-room manage- 
ment (1 credit required Senior year) there are "One or more visits 
to well managed schools in nearby cities." Catalog, p. 86. 

Normal. 

Total credits for graduation (2 year course) 26. 

Practice teaching: 3 credits (11.5%). 180 40-minute periods. In 
school connected with normal school. Senior year. 

Observation: Each practice teacher sees one demonstration lesson a 
week and spends a second hour discussing it. 

"The teachers of 'Teaching Process', General Method and Reading 
Method frequently take classes to the training school to observe 
work with the children. The same is done occasionally by other 
teachers." (These courses are 1 credit each, required in Junior 
year.) Other contact — "Certain students * * * supervise the 
children at noon recesses and during study periods." Catalog, 
p. 85. 

INDIANA. 

Terre Haute, and Eastern Division at Muncie. 

Total credits required for completion of degree course 48; for comple- 
tion of two year course, 25. 

Practice teaching: 2 credits in either course (4.2% and 8% respec- 
tively). In school connected with normal school. 1 hour a day. 

Observation: Course of one credit offered for college curriculum 
students, who wish to apply for teaching license. 

KANSAS. 

Emporia. 

Total credits required tot B. S. in Education 128; required for life 
certificate 66. 

Practice teaching: 4 credits in degree course (3.1%); 6 credits in 
life certificate course (9%). 

In an elementary school connected with normal school and, for 
teachers without previous experience, in city schools. 

Observation: Carried on in connection with conferences, 2 hours a 
week, which have taken the place of special methods courses. 
Simultaneous with practice. In connection with general methods 
courses (3 to 8 hours required). 

Other contact: "The director of teacher training and the professor 
of rural education act as chief advisers to candidates for the life 
certificate in electing their subject-matter courses." (Director of 
Training, H. G. Lull, in Educational Administration and Super- 
vision, Nov. 1918, p. 489.) 



32 

Fort Hays. 

Total credit required for degree 124 hour credits; for life certificate, 
62 hour credits. 

Practice teaching: 8 and 4 hours respectively. (6.4</c.) In city 
schools. 

Observation: In connection with methods courses and in connection 
with practice teaching. Some observation required in connection 
with course in Methods and Management; emphasis upon class 
demonstrations in course in primary methods. (Former 2 hours, 
latter, 4 hours credit.) 

KENTUCKY. 

Bowling Green. 

Practice teaching: 20 weeks, 5 periods a week. In an "Elementary 

school largely supported by the Normal School." 
Observation: 4 weeks, 5 times a week. Methods, classes in language 

and method classes in reading also observe in the training school. 

LOUISIANA. 

Natchitoches. 

Practice teaching: 1 period a day for one school year in practice 

school connected with the normal school. 
Observation: In connection with certain of the methods courses. 

MAINE. 

Farmington. 

Total required for graduation 180 hours. 

Practice teaching: 24 hours credit (13.3%). Full time teaching for 
one quarter of second year while student carries courses in ob- 
servation, methods and history of education. Most of practice 
teaching done in school connected with the normal school. Some 
students practice in town schools. 

Observation: A regular course as indicated above; some observation 
in connection with psychology. 

MARYLAND. 

Towson. 

Practice teaching: 3 hours a day for 12 weeks, in a practice school 
connected with normal school. 

Observation: Is carried on in connection with practice teaching. 
General methods courses are 20% demonstration lessons. In 
special methods courses there is almost as much (20%) of demon- 
stration lesson observation. 

MASSACHUSETTS. 

Bridgewater. — Three year curriculum. 

Practice teaching: Half day for 13 weeks in the training school; full 

day for 13 weeks in town schools. (16.6%.) Third year. 
Observation: 13 weeks, 2 periods a week in the second year. 



33 

Framingham. 

Practice teaching: Full time for 12 weeks; 8 weeks in practice school ; 

4 weeks in town schools. Senior (second) year. 
Observation: In connection with practice teaching. 

MICHIGAN. 

Ypsilanti. 

Practice teaching: 2 hours a day for 3 months, in school connected 
with the normal school. 

Observation: "Classes in the various methods courses are brought 
into the training school under the direction of the teacher of 
methods. Members of the Normal School Faculty bring their 
classes to the training school for observation and occasionally 
teach a class of children themselves." 

MISSOURI. 

Cape Girardeau. 

Total credits for graduation 60 hours (2 year course). 

Practice teaching: 6 credit hours (10%). 1 hour a day, in practice 
school connected with the normal school. 

Observation: "We give no separate course in observation because we 
have not the teaching force. Some observation is done in courses 
in school management, principles of teaching, special methods 
and school supervision. Students do not participate in the work 
of the training school until they take up their teaching." 

Warrensburg. 

Practice teaching: Three terms, one hour a day. (2 year curricu- 
lum). In practice school connected with normal school. 

Observation: A course in observation given by the principal of the 
training school precedes practice teaching. Some observation is 
carried on in connection with normal school classes, both in the 
training school and in public schools. 

MONTANA. 

Dillon. 

Practice teaching: 6 hours a week for 30 weeks. In the school sys- 
tem of Dillon. 

Observation: "Follows lectures on the theory and art of teaching. 
Six weeks of work * * * are given to students in groups of 
from five to eight and such observation is made under the direc- 
tion of the supervisor of the division (primary, intermediate or 
grammar grade). Courses in methods follow. 

Members of the collegiate staff give demonstration lessons as 
well. This latter is true particularly of the departments of Eng- 
lish, history, science and mathematics." 

Participation: "During the six weeks devoted to observation, the 
prospective cadet teacher assists the critic with board work, seat 
work, movement of pupils about the room, halls and playground 
and thus becomes familiar with the routine of management." 
— 3 E S N 



34 



MINNESOTA. 



Duluth. 

Total credit for graduation 1,410 hours. 

Practice teaching: 180 hours (12.8%). One term in practice school 
connected with normal school; a second term in city schools. 

Observation: In the term preceding practice teaching, three observa- 
tion lessons a week connected with two class hours devoted to 
school economy and psychology of the common branches. In con- 
nection with normal school course in reading the class observe 
work in reading both in practice school and in city schools (60 
hour required course). In connection with class in music, demon- 
stration and observation in training school. (60 hour required 
course.) 

Winona. 

Practice teaching: 240 hours. 180 hours in training school connected 

with normal school; 60 hours in city schools. 
Observation: "Carried on slightly in connection with methods courses 

and Theory of Education." 

NEBRASKA. 

Chadron. 

Practice teaching: Two class periods a day for one year, in a prac- 
tice school connected with the normal school. 

Observation: In connection with methods courses taught by training 
school staff covering branches taught in first ten grades. 

Peru. 

Total credits for graduation 64. 

Practice teaching: 4 credits (6.25%). One period a day one semester. 

Practice school connected with normal school. 
Observation: Combined with methods courses — 4 credits required. 

"Principles of Education" illustrated by model lessons in different 

subjects and grades. 

NEW HAMPSHIRE. 

Plymouth. 

Total credits for graduation, 100. 

Practice teaching: 18 credits (18%). Full time last half of second 
year. Village school organized as practice school. 

Observation: 4 credits required — 2 in Junior year; 2 in Senior year. 
Observation is carried on in connection with the following re- 
quired courses in the Junior year. 2 credits each: English 
literature and grammar; reading; history; physiology and 
hygiene; arithmetic. 

Other contact: "Normal school students are constantly on the play- 
ground and in the gymnasium with children of the practice 
school." Catalog, p. 39. 



35 



NEW MEXICO. 



Las Vegas. 

Total credits required for graduation 96 (2 year curriculum). 

Practice teaching: 10 credits, second year (10.4%). One hour a day 

for 24 weeks. Training school connected with normal school. 

Some substitute work is done in city school by students. 
Observation: In connection with courses in special methods for 12 

weeks preceding practice. 

NEW YORK. 

Fredonia. 

Credits required for graduation 2,420 hours. 

Practice teaching: 600 hours (24.8%). Practice school connected 

with normal school. 
Observation: In connection with practice teaching. "Connected with 

all professional work." 

Geneseo. 

Credits for graduation, 2,220 hours. 

Practice teaching: 600 hours (27%). Second year. In practice 
school connected with normal school. 

Observation: "The course in observation follows rather closely that 
in psychology with which it is intended to be correlated." Catalog, 
p. 21. 

"English II is related directly to the elementary school and its 
problems through observation lessons in the practice school." 
Catalog, p. 21. 

"English III and IV; Observation classes in the practice school are 
conducted in connection with both composition courses." Catalog, 
p. 22. 

"Reading, phonics and spelling: Throughout the course oppor- 
tunity is offered for the observation and discussion of type les- 
sons." Catalog, p. 23. 
Each of these courses, 100 hours required. 

"History classes for observation are taught in the practice school 
by the critic of the grade. The methods class observe such work 
under the direction of the methods teacher." Catalog, p. 27. 80 
hours required. 

Oneonta. 

Practice teaching: 550 hours, Senior year; practice school connected 

with normal school. 
Observation: 50 hours immediately preceding practice. 

Normal school teachers teach occasional observation lessons in 

connection with their courses. 

NORTH CAROLINA. 

Greenville. 

Credit for graduation, 153 hours. 

Practice teaching: 16 credit hours (10.4%). 16/25 full time for one 
term. Practice school connected with normal school. 



36 

Observation: Carried on in connection with practice teaching. Some 
observation in connection with methods course's. 

OHIO. 

Bowling Green. 

Practice teaching: 3 50-minute periods a week for 36 weeks, in prac- 
tice school, connected with normal school and in city schools. 

Observation: In connection with psychology. One lesson a week is 
observed for 18 weeks. A second period is devoted to discussion 
of lesson seen. 

Two 50-minute periods a week of observation in connection with 
course in principles of education; nine or ten demonstration les- 
sons in one term in connection with course in the teaching of 
arithmetic, in addition to regular hours of the course; three to 
six lessons each in courses in geography, history and English. 

Kent. 

Units required for graduation, 25. 

Practice teaching: Combined with observation and discussion, 3 units, 

(12%). One 45-minute period a day for 36 weeks. In practice 

school controlled by normal school, serving as one city ward 

school. 
Observation: In connection with methods courses in English, history, 

arithmetic and reading. In connection with course in principles 

of teaching. 

OKLAHOMA. 

Ada. 

Practice teaching: One period a day for 24 weeks, in school con- 
nected with normal school. 

Observation: One period a day for 12 weeks paralleling practice, 
in training school and public schools. Some observation in con- 
nection with English, arithmetic, history, elementary science. 

Other Contact: Some assistance is given by students in Junior year 
in music, drawing and penmanship in training school. 

PENNSYLVANIA. 

Bloomsourg. 

Practice teaching: 200 40-minute periods in practice school connected 
with normal school. 

Observation: Each critic teacher gives six demonstration lessons 
preliminary to practice teaching. Some observation in connec- 
tion with psychology. 

RHODE ISLAND. 

Practice teaching: 5 credit hours in practice school — single hour 
teaching; full time one semester in city training schools; half 
year as regular teacher under normal school supervision. 

Observation: In connection with all methods courses. 



37 



SOUTH DAKOTA. 



Madison. 

Total credits required for graduation, 122. 

Practice teaching: 25 credits (20.5%); one hour a day for 12 weeks 
in Junior year; 2 hours a day for 12 weeks in Senior year; in 
practice school connected with normal school and to a limited 
extent in city schools. 

Observation: A course in observation and school economy recites 
daily for 12 weeks. Demonstration lessons are given in connec- 
tion with an elective course in story telling. 

8 : p ear fish. 

Practice teaching: Three semesters, one hour a day. Practice school 

connected with normal school. 
Observation: Carried on in connection with courses in psychology, 

general method, methods in arithmetic and methods in English. 
Other contact: Students supervise playground activities of practice 

school pupils. 

TENNESSEE, 

Johnson City. 

Practice teaching: Combined with observation, 100 hours. Practice 
school connected with normal school. 

Observation: "Courses in observation are given under the direction 
of the observation school director and critic teachers and are con- 
nected with the normal school courses in methods. Normal school 
teachers give occasional demonstration lessons." 

TEXAS. 

Canyon. 

Practice teaching: 3 hours a day for 3 months in practice school 
connected with normal school. 

Observation: Given in connection with courses in education. Demon- 
stration lessons given by department of education teachers and 
by training school supervisors. 

Other contact: Students assist in recess supervision and in keeping 
student records. 

VIRGINIA. 

East Radford. 

Practice teaching: 12 weeks, 15 hours a week. Practice school con- 
nected with normal school. 

Observation: 2 lessons a week given by critic teachers in Junior 
year. One lesson a day in senior year under direction of director 
of training. Of these lessons, 30 each term are taught by critic 
teachers; 10 by teachers of special subjects; 10 by student 



teachers. 



■jm 



38 



WASHINGTON. 



Bellingliam. 

Practice teaching: 10 credit hours. Begins in practice school con- 
nected with normal school. For one term half day or full day 
teaching in city schools. 

Observation: In connection with courses given by department of 
education. Demonstration lessons taught by teachers in the 
normal school departments. 

Ellensburg. 

Credits required for graduation, 96 credit hours. 

Practice teaching: 9 credit hours (9.4%). Practice school connected 

with normal school. 6 hours in Junior year; 3 hours Senior year. 
Observation: All methods courses are also observation courses. 12 

hours required. 
Other contact: Students in psychology give standard tests in schools 

in nearby towns. 3 hours required. 

WISCONSIN. 

Platteville. 

Practice teaching: One hour a day for one year in senior year; for 
the greater number of students entirely in practice school con- 
nected with normal school; for a few, a part of the time in city 
schools. 

Observation: Connected with courses in psychology and in educa- 
tion; in connection with courses in music, arithmetic and geog- 
raphy. 

Stevens Point. 

Practice teaching: 18 to 36 weeks, one period a day. Senior year. 
Training school connected with normal school. 

Observation: "We have one room in our training school set aside for 
the purpose of conducting demonstration lessons and attempt to 
have some class in process there at all hours of the day. Some 
students take advantage of the opportunity to observe work in 
the demonstration room and observe every day for weeks before 
attempting to teach, but such students are the exception." 

Each of these forty-six schools has one type of student con- 
tact with the training department definitely provided for, namely, 
practice teaching. In the nineteen schools for which the propor- 
tion can be definitely ascertained, the practice teaching varies in 
amount in the two-year curricula from 6.25% to 27% of the total 
credits required for graduation, the median for the nineteen being 
11.5%. 

Forty-two of the forty-six schools have definite provision for 
the observation of teaching and the discussion of the lessons seen. 
One of the remaining four provides demonstration lessons at all 



39 

hours of every day which students may attend voluntarily. The 
three others carry on observation only as an incident to practice 
teaching. 

Beyond this, the amount and nature of the contact of students 
with the practice schools depends upon the interest of particular 
teachers in using the facilities of the training schools in connec- 
tion with their courses. If the number of teachers having such 
interest happens to be large in a school, the variety of courses 
which involve contact with the training department is correspond- 
ingly large; if such teachers are few, the contact of the students 
with the training department is less. 

The normal school courses which involve, some in one school, 
some in another, among the forty-six schools studied, direct con- 
tact with the kind of school in which students in the course are 
preparing to teach are : 

Psychology Algebra 

Theory of teaching Drawing 

Principles of education Manual Arts 

Educational measurements Physical education 

Arithmetic General method 

History Special methods 

Geography School management 

Grammar and composition Latin 

Literature Story telling 

Reading Household arts 

Science Music 

The contacts found may be summarized under four heads: 

1. Practice teaching with the accompanying conferences; vary- 

in amount from 6.25% to 27% of the student's work in the 
two years spent in the normal school. 

2. Observation varying in amount from such observation of teach- 

ing as is incidental to practice teaching to full year courses, 
with widely differing amounts of observation in connection 
with the courses listed above. 

3. Participation in the work of the training school before prac- 

tice teaching is undertaken by assisting teachers in school- 
room routine, by supervising playground activities and 
study rooms. 

4. Testing results by use of standard tests in connection with 

courses in psychology and in education. 

The striking fact brought out by the data considered is the 
wide variation in the sorts of contact afforded and in the amount 
of practice teaching, which is the only sort of contact common to 



40 

all of the schools. As Sanders 1 says in conclusion to his study 
of eighty-one normal schools: "There is among normal schools 
no recognized best way to develop a student teacher." He reports 
a variation in the amount of practice teaching required from 30 
to 400 teaching hours. Judd and Parker 2 report a variation, 
among the thirteen schools studied, from 4% to 27% of the total 
curriculum requirements. 

A change toward greater uniformity in respect to the practice- 
teaching requirement may well be brought about by an approach 
to the median amount from both extremes. The curricula of the 
schools offering the very small amounts are certainly too little pro- 
fessionalized ; purely academic courses occupy too prominent a 
place; the professional aspects are too little emphasized. In the 
schools where the largest amounts of practice are required the 
curricula are too narrowly professional; "review courses" and 
"methods courses" are prominent and other types of professional 
courses on a collegiate level are lacking. For a part of this long 
practice period might well be substituted professional courses on 
a higher level and preparatory participation in the work of the 
training school which would make a shorter period of practice, 
when undertaken, more effective than is the longer period now 
required. 

Practice can be and is being made more effective by such par- 
ticipation; but it is clear that no form of participation can take 
the place of responsible practice teaching. The attempt to make 
it do so in the teachers' training department of the University 
of Wisconsin under the name of "Directed Teaching" as reported 
in the Eighteenth Year Book of the National Society for the Study 
of Education does not sound convincing, but it does suggest a type 
of profitable participation which may be substituted for a part of 
the long practice teaching period in certain of the schools studied. 
The following quotations indicate the essential features of this so- 
called "Directed Teaching": 

"Each college senior in this course * * * participates in 
the high-school class in the Wisconsin High School approximately 
forty days for one hour a day. Each of these seniors writes each 

*W. H. Sanders, Pedagogical Semenary, March, 1918, p. 55. 
2 Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1916, No. 12, p. 85. 



41 

day three to four pages (300-500 words) on the 5x8 cards already 
described, which are provided for these daily reports." 1 

"It should be remembered that throughout the class hour the 
staff teacher is always directly in charge * * *. The signifi- 
cant point is that the college senior is a member of a class group, 
admitted on a clearly recognized basis of participation." 2 

"The first practical responsibility of the college senior is to 
become the best pupil in the class, not always an easy task for the 
majority of college seniors. After demonstrated fitness to lead the 
class, many and varied opportunities are given to assist the staff 
teacher. As noted above, this is not a privilege reserved exclusive- 
ly for college seniors in the Wisconsin High School; pupils enjoy 
the same privilege as a part of their educational development under 
the doctrine of self expression and development of personal in- 
itiative." 3 

A period of training-school experience which makes the 
teacher-in-training "a member of the class group" in the sort of 
school in which he is preparing to teach; which makes him "the 
best pupil in the class" and gives him in common with the better 
pupils in the class "many and varied opportunities to assist the 
staff teacher" who is "always directly in charge" with the result 
that there are written "300-500 words of daily comment" by the 
student upon what he has seen and done in the training school, 
represents a valuable type of participation. It needs to be sup- 
plemented, however, by some opportunity for the student to meet 
a situation where it is not true that there is a staff member in 
direct charge, and where his responsibility for directing the work 
of the class is unequivocal. 

This example of teacher preparation cannot safely be followed 
by normal schools. The important problem is to increase oppor- 
tunity for completely responsible teaching as a final type of pro- 
fessional preparation. The new curriculum of the Ehode Island 
Normal School, which went into effect after June, 1919, represents 
the more desirable direction of change in normal school curricula. 
No student is to be graduated from that school who has not first, 
after completing all other normal-school requirements including 

JEighteenth Year-book of the National Society for the study of Educa- 
tion, p. 104. 

2 Ibid, p. 15. 

3 Ibid, p. 20. 



42 

the period of apprentice teaching, completed also a half-year of 
fully responsible teaching as a regularly employed teacher in a 
school system, under the supervision of the normal school. 

The conclusion is justified from the analysis of the work done 
in these forty-six schools, that there is no sort of work carried 
on in normal schools which cannot be and is not being made to 
have its direct relation to the work of the training department 
and to bring students into contact with the children of the train- 
ing schools. There are certain limitations which prevent such cor- 
relation. Five have been mentioned by training-school directors 
and normal-school presidents in connection with this study. They 
are: 

1. Lack of disposition on the part of normal-school teachers 

to cooperate with the training department. 

2. Lack of the sort of ability and training on the part of 

normal-school teachers which would make such cooper- 
ation effective. 

3. Overloaded programs for normal-school teachers due to 

inadequate financial resources. 

4. Overloaded programs for training-school teachers due to 

the same cause and to lack of appreciation on the part 
of normal-school administrators of how heavy the critic 
teachers' and supervisors' load is. 

5. Overcrowded curricula. There is not time for the normal- 

school student to do all that he should do in the time 
in which he tries to get his professional preparation. 
The first four of these will be considered in section four. In 
connection with the fifth, the curricula of four schools have been 
examined which offer both two-year and four-year curricula, for 
the purpose of discovering what additional contact with the train- 
ing department the addition of two years to the period for prep- 
aration involves. 

1. Macomb, Illinois. Curriculum leading to degree B. S. in Edu- 
cation. For- preparation of High School teachers. 
Program A. 

First two years identical with two year curriculum. In the 
two additional years one term additional of practice teach- 
ing is required in the student's major subject. If Edu- 
cation 32, Psychology of School Subjects, is chosen as one 
of the additional subjects in education, some observation 



43 

is done. The minor electives may be, but need not be, 
so chosen that a term of practice teaching in those sub- 
jects may be taken. 

Program B. 

The major and minor subjects are chosen and begun in the 
first two years and the practice teaching deferred until 
the third or fourth year. It is then the same in amount 
as in the two year curriculum. 

2. Cape Girardeau, Missouri. "College curriculum leading to a 

college degree that contains courses in education as part of 

the requirement for graduation." 

One course offering contact with the training department 
in addition to that required in the two year curriculum is 
offered in the four -year curriculum, a course in the teach- 
ing of Latin, in connection with which demonstration 
lessons are observed. 

3. Indiana State Normal School. Curriculum leading to the 

degree B. A. in Education. 

No discoverable additional contact with the training depart- 
ment involved in the longer curriculum. 

4. Normal, Illinois. Degree curricula for the preparation of 

High School teachers. 

No discoverable additional contact. Practice teaching, in 
the same amount as in the two-year curricula, is deferred 
until the fourth year ordinarily but may be taken for two 
of the three required terms, in the second year. 
If normal schools are to offer four years of work, as it is ro 
be hoped that they may in large numbers in the not distant future, 
the justification for such extended curricula must be that they 
offer a kind of professional training not now offered by other 
institutions or offered by too few of them to meet the demand for 
the preparation of teachers on a high level. This distinctive feat- 
ure must be the intimate contact which the work is made to sus- 
tain throughout its four years with whatever grade or type of work 
the student is preparing to teach. The addition of two years of 
really professional work in the preparation of teachers of all grades 
will strengthen the normal schools. The addition of two years 
which are less professional than the two years already given in 
most of the normal schools cannot but weaken the whole profes- 
sional work of the school. It will do this by diversion of funds 



44 

and diversion of faculty and student interest from purely profes- 
sional work. The addition of longer curricula for the preparation 
of high-school teachers only will tend to continue the stratification 
of the teaching population which must be done away with before 
the profession as a whole can be put upon a sound basis either 
economical^ or professionally. 

In the minds of both normal-school men and of persons 
outside of normal schools, the question of whether four-year 
curricula shall be offered by normal schools is now so confused 
with the question of whether or not normal schools shall prepare 
high school teachers that it has never received fair consideration on 
its own merits. The question of length of curricula must be 
settled on the basis of whether four profitable years of prepara- 
tion for teaching can be offered. The question of what grade of 
teachers shall be prepared is an independent question and it is to 
the detriment of the normal schools that the two issues have been 
confused. 

A factor which must be considered in estimating the amount 
of student contact with the training department is the amount of 
time that the student teacher spends in preparing for his teaching 
each day. If the time spent in preparation for an hour of teach- 
ing is longer than the time spent in preparation for an hour of 
recitation in normal-school subjects, an hour of training-school 
work in the student's program represents more than does an hour 
of other normal school work. 

An inquiry into this subject has been made at Winona, Minne- 
sota, and the following report made 1 : 

"Forty five hours per week of study and class discussion is ex- 
pected from each student. That is, each teacher is desired to re- 
quire on the average not more and not less than an hour and twenty 
minutes of preparation for each class exercise scheduled for five 
recitations per week. A student carries four subjects at once and 
so meets for 20 periods a week. With this student load the class 
periods are properly limited to 45 minutes in the clear. 

"An inquiry into just what demands are being made by the 
instructors of each class is made from time to time. The average 
minutes of study for each subject as reported by students are listed 

1 Winona Normal Bulletin, February, 1917, pp. 281-2. 



45 

for all subjects and distributed among the teachers for their in- 
formation. Such inquiry shows that among the subjects and teach- 
ers the variation is as follows: 



TABLE 8— THE AVERAGE NUMBER OF DAILY HOURS AND 

MINUTES OF STUDY GIVEN BY CLASSES IN NORMAL 

SCHOOL SUBJECTS AT WINONA DURING TWO TERMS; 
FALL 1914 AND SPRING 1916. 

Subject. Fall 1914. Spring 1916. 

Advanced woodwork 1:31 

Arithmetic 1:10 1:36 

Chemistry 1:38 

Child Study 1:07 

Civics 1:34 1:30 

Cookery .". 1:31 2:22 

Drawing 1:11 

Economics 1:00 1:29 

Elementary Hand work 1:30 1:35 

Elementary Science 1:15 1 : 11 

English 1:02 1:20 

Geography > 1:14 1 : 19 

History of Education 1:38 1:25 

Manual Training 1:21 1 : 48 

Music :36 1:03 

Pedagogy 1:06 1:28 

Physics 1: 45 

Physiology 1:48 1:13 

Primary Methods 1:01 

Psychology 1:10 1 : 14 

Public Speaking 1:30 1:18 

Reading 1:03 1:26 

Rural Sociology 1:45 

School Management 1 : 01 1:20 

History of U. S 1:43 2:02 

Household Administration 1 : 22 1:30 

Kindergarten Principles : 58 : 51 

Literature 1:08 

Sewing and Textiles 1:18 : 50 

Sociology 1:50 1:12 

Teaching 2:20 2:33 

Technics 1:20 1:33 

Zoology 1:22 1:27 

Average for all 1:21 1 : 26 

From this study it appears that practice teaching represents, 

for every hour scheduled, a total amount of time spent of three 
hours and twenty minutes or three hours and thirty-three minutes 

compared with an average of two hours and twenty-one minutes 
or two hours and twenty-six minutes represented by a scheduled 



46 

hour of all normal school subjects averaged ,together. The devia- 
tion of the time spent in preparing for one hour of practice teach-* 
ing from the average time spent in preparing for an hour of 
recitation in all normal school subjects was, for the fall term, 
1914, 59 minutes, or 72.8% of the value of the middle measure 
(average), and for the spring term, 1916, 67 minutes, or 84.2% 
of the value of the average. 

Sixty-three seniors in the Eastern Illinois State Normal 
School who were doing an hour of practice teaching and carrying 
three other subjects each day were asked to report how many niia- 
utes were spent on the average in preparation for one hour of reci- 
tation in each subject and how many minutes in preparaion for one 
period of practice teaching. The median time reported as spent 
in preparation for each of the following subjects is as indicated. 
Certain subjects, — required Junior work being made up, — are 
omitted. Belated subjects in which but a few students are en- 
rolled are grouped together. 

Median number 
of minutes spent in 
preparation for 
Subject. one recitation. 

Practice teaching 100 to 109 

History of education 50 to 59 

Philosophy of education 50 to 59 

Literature 40 to 49 

Mathematics: 

Trigonometry ] 

Analytics \ 80 to 89 

College Algebra J 

Physiology 40 to 49 

Economics 50 to 59 

Science: 

Physics ] 

Zoology ....} 30 to 39 

Botany J 

French 40 to 49 

Domestic Art 30 to 39 

Manual Arts 30 to 39 

Public school music 20 to 29 

Median for the 11 subjects or groups other than teaching, 40-49. 

The evidence from these two studies shows that a scheduled 
hour of practice teaching means more work in teaching than a 
scheduled hour of normal school work does in the subject concerned 
by a margin of 75% at Winona, of 100% at Charleston. If the 



47 

situation in these two schools is typical of the condition in normal 
schools generally, "credit hours" of teaching required do not give 
an adequate index to amount of work involved in teaching in com- 
parison with the work required in other subjects. Of this fact per- 
sons who make normal-school programs and administer normal 
school credits should take cognizance. 

In 22 of the 46 normal schools studied, practice teaching is 
done entirely in single hour periods, and in 18 of the 22 the groups 
taught include 15 children or fewer. Such teaching is valuable 
but needs to be supplemented by teaching for longer periods with 
larger groups of pupils, to be undertaken after the beginning 
teaching has been done in shorter periods with small groups. 

The large number of untrained teachers who enter the school 
systems of the country every year has made necessary an elaborate, 
expensive, but as yet ineffective system of supervision. The value 
of supervision varies directly with the preparation of the teachers. 
So long as facilities for the professional preparation of teachers 
are inadequate and large numbers of untrained teachers must be 
employed the necessity for elaborate directive supervision will con- 
tinue. But as the number of professionally prepared teachers 
increases, the burden of directive supervision should be lightened, 
and largely shifted to the normal schools. The teacher-training 
curriculum should include teaching under such conditions that 
the graduating student is prepared to undertake fully responsible 
teaching and to carry it on successfully under a minimum of super* 
vision, and under supervision which is more clearly cooperative 
rather than directive. Single-period, small-group practice teach- 
ing does not give this preparation. 

The Ehode Island State Normal School plan already referred 
to promises to accomplish the desired result of shifting the respon- 
sibility for supervision of teachers where they are just beginning, 
which is the time when there is the greatest need for supervision, 
from the public-school system to the normal school. During a fifth 
half year, following the two years spent in residence at the normal 
school, students in this school teach full time in city training 
schools under the direction of critic teachers who are members of 



48 

the normal school staff. After June, 1919, a sixth half year was 
added to the curriculum, during which the 'student is to be a 
regularly employed teacher in a school system, but will be under 
the direct supervision of normal school teachers. 

Several states now grant life certificates to graduates of nor- 
mal schools only after a period — one year or two years — of suc- 
cessful teaching following graduation. But this teaching is not 
done under the supervision of normal school authorities, and in 
many cases is not even inspected by these authorities, the judgment 
as to whether the teaching has been successful being based upon 
the report of the principal of the school or the superintendent of 
the system where the teacher is employed. 

The small area over which the graduates of the Rhode Island 
Normal School are distributed makes close supervision under the 
plan described easy. But the wider distribution of graduates of 
normal schools in other states does not make such supervision and 
extension of training impossible. No other half year could be 
added to the normal school curriculum so cheaply; probably no 
other could be more serviceable both to the graduating students 
and to the communities to which they go as teachers. 

A very important type of contact with the training depart- 
ment which is not listed as a separate one in connection with any 
of the schools but is present in all is the contact through confer- 
ences that are incidental to practice teaching. Every student 
teacher has at least one hour of conference with critic teacher or 
supervisor each week at which all students working under the 
direction of the critic or supervisor are present. Many of them 
have short daily conferences with additional longer ones at irregu- 
lar intervals. Sixty-three seniors in the Eastern Illinois State 
Normal School report daily conferences of from three to fifty 
minutes, the median being eleven minutes. What purposes these 
conferences serve and their importance in the training school work 
will be discussed in detail in section five. 

The returns from the forty-six schools studied show that the 
separate courses in "Observation" are giving way to observation 
in connection with specific subject-matter courses, courses in psy- 



49 

chology and education; observational work is also being required 
in connection with practice teaching. Only one school reported 
unsupervised, volunteer observation; fourteen submitted detailed 
directions for observation which are given to students who are to 
discuss the lessons seen with the teacher who teaches them or with 
the instructor in charge of the course in connection with which 
the observation is carried on. The more concrete the purpose with 
which the student goes to the demonstration lesson the more of 
value that lesson will have. The low median value attached to 
observation of teaching as a factor in preparation for teaching in 
the study reported in section one, — 12.5 out of 100 points dis- 
tributed among academic courses, professional courses, observa- 
tion of teaching and practice teaching, — is probably due to the 
observation having been carried on in general observation courses 
instead of in connection with specific courses which would direct 
the observation toward very much more specific details of the teach- 
ing observed. This is indicated by an examination of the catalogs 
of normal schools published ten years ago, which represent the 
normal school curricula as they were when the larger number of 
the persons who contributed to this study were in normal schools 
as students. 

CONCLUSIONS : 

1. Normal schools differ among themselves more widely in 
the amount of student contact with the training department for 
which they provide than they do in the facilities which make such 
contact possible. 

2. A very large number of the courses offered in all normal 
schools studied are, some in one school some in another, made to 
involve such contact. What is done successfully and profitably in 
one school can with certain limitations, be done equally well in an- 
other. More attention and effort should be given to making the 
excellencies of one school common to all. 

3. The largest single element which reduces the amount of 
such contact is the lack of disposition and training on the part of 

— 4 E S N 



50 

normal-school teachers which would lead them to make such con- 
tact an important part of the work in their courses. Such con- 
tact to be profitable needs careful planning and supervision. Be- 
cause poorly conducted observation is unprofitable it is easy to 
assume that observation is not worth while and that discussion of 
teaching problems can be made concrete and effective without the 
students actually "sensing" the schoolroom situation involving the 
problems. 

4. Too little attention has been given to devising sorts of 
participation which will provide more active contact with the train- 
ing school than does observation without the degree of responsibil- 
ity involved in practice teaching, for which students are not yet 
adequately prepared. 

5. In too many schools practice teaching ends with the teach- 
ing of a small group of pupils for a single period. It should be 
extended to include teaching with more nearly complete responsi- 
bility for longer periods with larger groups. This may be done 
without increasing the total number of hours of practice teaching 
required if that requirement is already as great as the curriculum 
will allow. 

6. The possibility of student contact with the training de- 
partment is reduced by the overcrowded program of normal-school 
teachers, particularly of members of the training school staff, and 
by lack of adequate training school facilities. The remedy for 
these conditions lies within the power of governing boards but a 
first step toward their improvement is the preparation, by the 
faculty, of a very definite program of what the school believes can 
be profitably undertaken with more adequate facilities and larger 
staff. 

7. The administrative arrangement of more extended cur- 
ricula in normal schools is underemphasizing the importance of 
adding courses which give additional contact with the training 
department. If normal schools are to justify the extension of 
their curricula to four years they must provide a sort of work in 
the last two years which is more valuable as professional prepara- 
tion for teachers than are two years in a standard college or uni- 
versity added to two years of normal school preparation. 



51 



IV. 

PARTICIPATION BY NORMAL SCHOOL TEACHERS IN 
THE WORK OF THE TRAINING DEPARTMENT 
AND BY THE TRAINING SCHOOL STAFF IN THE 
WORK OF OTHER NORMAL SCHOOL DEPART- 
MENTS. 

In the process of making the training school the central feat- 
ure of the normal school, an indispensable step is the arousing of 
interest in the work of the training school on the part of members 
of the normal-school faculty who are not on the immediate train- 
ing-school staff. As a means of arousing and sustaining such 
interest, or as a result of the interest already existing, normal- 
school teachers may properly be expected to participate in some 
very active way in the work of the training department. 

John W. Cook, until lately president of the Northern Illinois 
State Normal School at DeKalb, Illinois, said before the Normal- 
school department of the National Education Association in 1914: 

"There are few things that will do so much for a normal 
school as the teaching of children daily for all or at least for a good 
part of each year by the teachers in the normal departments. 
* * * It will be found that nothing else will have so potent 
an influence upon the character of the instruction in the normal 
classrooms. Theory will soon reduce itself to usable form and 
will test itself by its value as a schoolroom procedure. There 
will be little talk about method ; but there will be a deal of think- 
ing accomplished in the way of getting material into shape for 
use with children." 1 

In the report of the Commissioner of Education for 1915 a 
report appears on "Progress of Teacher Training" by Charles 
Hugh Johnson, from which the following extract is taken : 

"A letter was addressed to presidents of normal schools re- 
questing accounts of recent progress. 69 very full and satis- 
factory replies were received from 33 different states. * * * 

*N. E. A. Proceeding's and Reports, 1914, p. 547. 



52 

Nine normal schools report an increase in student hours required 
to be devoted to practice teaching. Fourteen schools report plans 
whereby there may be closer affiliation and cooperation between 
the regular staff of teachers and the practice work. These reports 
indicate a shifting of emphasis from the scholastic development 
of pedagogical theory and educational science to the development 
of that theory and science which the instructor can illustrate in 
the model school/ 51 

The movement for such correlation was started in a definite 
way at the meeting of the normal school section of the National 
Education Association in 1899, by the report already referred to. 
In that report it was recommended that: 

"Heads of departments in the normal school should be super- 
visors in fact of their subjects in the training school as follows: 

1. They should propose in writing to the principal the sub- 

ject matter for the curriculum in their respective stud- 
ies. 

2. They should propose to the principal what seem to them 

the leading points in method involved in the presenta- 
tion of the subject matter suggested. 

3. They should assist the principal in supervising instruc- 

tion of critic and student teachers in their respective 
duties, offering suggestions and exchanging ideas freely. 

These duties should be performed by the heads of departments 
for their own good as well as for the good of the training school." 

Whether or not the methods proposed in the foregoing are 
acceptable, the principle is beyong question a sound one. It has 
been restated repeatedly in the twenty years since the report was 
made. In furnishing the material for the present study sixteen 
principals of normal schools, directors of training and principals 
of training schools have made unsolicited statements of the sound- 
ness of the principle. 

It is not less important that members of the training school 
staff should take part in the teaching of normal school classes. 
The same end is accomplished, namely, correlating the work of the 
training school with that of the other departments of the normal 
school, and the additional benefit follows that the status of the 
critic teacher and supervisor is raised both in the eyes of other 
teachers and in the estimation of students. It also mobilizes much 



1 Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1915. pp. 525 and 530. 



' 53 

expert teaching ability. It is safe to assert that the percent of 
critic and supervising teachers in training departments who can 
conduct classes of adult students successfully is much greater than 
the percent of normal-school teachers who can conduct classes of 
training school pupils with an equal degree of success. It is not 
implied that every teacher should be able to do both sorts of teach- 
ing equally successfully. But it is urged that, in so far as people 
who can do so are available, it is greately to the advantage of a 
normal school to have such persons on its staff. 

The data for this section come from the replies made by prin- 
cipals of normal schools and of training schools to the two ques- 
tions : 

"What members of the teaching staff of the normal school 
participate in the work of the training department? What is 
the nature of the participation in each case? 

"What members of the staff of the training school participate 
in the work of the normal school other than in that of the train- 
ing department? What is the nature of the participation in each 
case ?" 

Usable replies were received from 43 of the 100 schools to 
which the questions were sent. The following states are repre- 
sented in the replies : 

Georgia Missouri Oklahoma 

Idaho Montana Pennsylvania 

Illinois Michigan South Dakota 

Kansas- Nebraska Tennessee 

Kentucky New Hampshire Texas 

Louisiana New Mexico Virginia 

Maine New York Washington 

Maryland North Carolina Wisconsin 

Minnesota Ohio 

The following table gives the summary of the types of par- 
ticipation reported and the frequency with which each was re- 
ported : 

SUMMARY OF TYPES OF COOPERATION BETWEEN NORMAL, 
DEPARTMENTS AND TRAINING DEPARTMENT IN FORTY- 
THREE SCHOOLS. 

Schools so 
reporting. 

1. Training school staff part of general normal school 

faculty for all purposes 23 

2. Training school supervisors, but not room teachers, part 

. of normal school faculty for all purposes 5 



54 

» Schools so 

reporting. 

3. Entire training school staff part of normal school faculty 

only for consideration of matters of training school 
policy 3 

4. Head of training department gives courses in department 

of education 35 

5. Principal of training school (a separate person from 

director of training) teaches classes in normal school 4 

6. Normal school teachers supervise practice 8 

7. Normal school teachers determine methods to be used in 

various subjects in training school 2 

8. Normal school teachers act as advisers to training school 

staff in some definite way 4 

9. Normal school teachers make course of study for train- 

ing school, in whole or in part 7 

10. Normal school teachers teach demonstration lessons.... 6 

11. Normal school teachers of drawing, manual arts, do- 

mestic science and art, physical education teach their 
subjects in training school also 19 

12. Normal school teachers of other than special subjects 

mentioned above give instruction in training school.. 7 

13. Critic teachers give instruction in normal school during 

regular terms 15 

14. Critic teachers give courses in normal school in summer 

session 6 

15. Standard tests are given in training school by members 

of normal school faculty 5 

16. Normal school teachers and critic teachers give joint 

courses in observation 11 

17. Teachers in normal school and training school visit one 

anothers classes systematically 3 

18. Normal school instructors hold conferences with training- 

school staff upon invitation 2 

The list is not an exhaustive one for the schools concerned. 
There can be no question, for example, that there is much more 
mutual visitation between the training department and other nor- 
mal school departments than the list indicates. It is probable that 
in schools where it is carried on extensively it is so clearly taken 
for granted that no special mention of it was made in the reports. 
In one of the cases where it was mentioned, it was spoken of to 
call attention to the limited degree in which it takes place. That 
it is not universal, however, is indicated by the statement of a 
training-school principal who reported that, in the school with 
which he is connected, some normal-school teachers who have been 
in the school for ten years have never set foot in the training 
school. The figures for the eighth, sixteenth, and eighteenth items 



55 

are probably very much too low to give a fair picture of the situa- 
tion in the forty-three schools concerned. Other items may also 
be present in more schools than the data show. 

Nor can mere enumeration of definite items of participation- 
give an adequate idea of the situation in a school. President Bo- 
hannon, of Duluth, writes: 

"The training, experience, and ambition of those who work not 
only in the training department but in the normal school, are of 
much greater importance than the organization itself. * * * 
Given people who know what the problem of dealing with children 
of the elementary school is, and who are interested in the problem 
as they should be, and who are willing to give their best to it, most 
of the questions relating to organization become, relatively speak- 
ing, minor questions." 

The value of such a list as is here given, obviously incomplete 
in the number of items and even more incomplete in the numbers 
of schools which the available data show to have cooperation in 
the ways listed, is to give suggestions as to possible ways in which 
there may be cooperation. Not only the disposition to cooperate, 
which President Bbhannon mentions, is essential, but also some 
degree of skill in cooperation and knowledge of ways in which to 
cooperate. The officers of twenty-one schools from among the 
forty-three with whom correspondence was carried on in making 
this study state that they are seeking for a solution for the problem 
of bringing about a closer relation between the training depart- 
ment and the academic and professional departments of the schools 
with which they are connected. Only three say that they believe 
that the problem has been satisfactorily worked out in their schools. 
The interest attaching to any one of the eighteen items listed de- 
pends upon the organization of each particular school which may 
contemplate that item as a possible new means of attack upon the 
problem rather than upon the number of schools which have al- 
ready attempted to make use of that means. 

Of the twenty-three schools reporting that the training school 
staff as a whole are a part of the general normal-school faculty 
for all purposes, all state definitely that there is no distinction of 
status between training school teachers and other normal-school 
teachers. In only six cases is the reservation made that there is 



56 

a distinction made as to salary. "What the 'other seventeen an- 
swers mean is, probably, that there is theoretical equality in spite 
of salary differences. But so long as considerable salary differ- 
ences exist there is, of course, a very real difference of status. 
That there is a distinction as to salary is indicated by all available 
figures. 

Judd and Parker 1 give, as a typical salary distribution, an 
instructors pay-roll in which the median salary for all teachers, 
administrative officers not included, is $1,600; for critic teachers, 
$1,000. 

They cite as a typical salary scale for a larger school, a pay- 
roll showing a mediam for salaries in departments other than the 
training department of $1,400; for critic teachers, $1,200. For 
one Illinois school they report: president's salary, $5,000; salary of 
director of training, $4,500; salary of professor of pedagogy, 
$3,455; salary of one critic teacher, $2,000; salary of other critic 
teachers, about $1,000. In suming up the relative salaries of critic 
teacher and teachers in other normal-school departments they say: 

"The point of departure for our consideration here is the fact 
that every normal-school graduate who has had the good fortune 
to teach for 100 hours under the careful supervision of a superior 
critic teacher has probably profited more in terms of efficiency 
from this experience than from any 1000 hours of departmental 
instruction in the normal school. * * * We shall not attempt 
to give a precise answer to the question which we have raised, but 
shall say in general that some normal schools would greatly in- 
crease their concrete effectiveness by subtracting money from the 
salaries of departmental instructors and using it to increase the 
effectiveness of the supervision of practice teaching." 2 

The salary scale for teachers in the training department and 
for teachers in other normal school departments can be equalized 
by other means than reducing the salaries of departmental teach- 
ers ; but the essential thing is that the salaries should be equalized 
if persons of adequate ability and training are to be secured for the 
ciritic positions. It is to be regretted that President Keith, in an 
address before the Normal-school department of the N. E. A. in 
Chicago in 1919 proposed a salary schedule for normal schools 

1 Problems Involved in Standardizing State Normal Schools, 1916, p. 71. 
"Ibid, p. 72. 



57 

which contemplates substantially lower salaries for critic teachers 
than for other normal-school instructors. 

The single item reported most generally from the schools from 
which data have been gathered, whereby the training department 
and other normal-school departments are brought into relation, is 
through having the director of training a member of the depart- 
ment of education, giving instruction in that department; so re- 
ported from thirty-five schools. In nineteen of these thirty-five the 
head of the training department is also head of the department of 
education. In five schools all members of the training school staff 
are members of the department of education. 

This represents an encouraging approach to the standard sug- 
gested in the "Curricula Designed for the Professional Preparation 
of Teachers For American Public Schools" where, in section nine, 
it is stated in regard to correlation of training departments with 
other normal school departments : 

"The correlation above suggested should be particularly close 
between the courses in psychology and educational theory on the 
one hand and the courses in practice teaching on the other. To 
this end, all of these courses should be coordinated under the 
general control of the director of the training department." 

The most conspicuous failure to reach this standard is in con- 
nection with the courses in psychology. In only eight of the thirty- 
five schools in which the director of training gives courses in the 
normal school is the course in psychology one of the courses given. 
History of education is taught by the director of training almost 
as often as is psychology (seven cases). The courses most fre- 
quently given are methods courses (nineteen eases) ; courses in 
theory of education (eleven cases) ; philosophy of education (five 
cases). The same director of training is counted more than once 
in these figures where he gives more than one course. In three 
other schools the teacher of psychology participates in some way 
in the work of the training department. A possible solution for 
the present pressing problem of making the teaching of psychology 
in normal schools more effective is to be found in establishing in- 
timate relations between the teacher of psychology and the training 
department. Detailed suggestion for bringing the teaching of psy- 



58 

chology into relation with the training department are given in 
the latter part of this section. 

The degree to which normal school teachers may advantage- 
ously superivse practice teaching is hard to determine. Supervision 
is a difficult matter under the most favorable conditions and to 
divide the responsibility for supervising any single group of prac- 
tice teachers between critic teacher and normal-school instructor 
makes it even more difficult. One normal-school president states 
definitely that it does not work. Barton, in an unpublished history 
of normal schools in the United States, submitted as a master's 
thesis at Columbia University, says of the Ypsilanti, Michigan, 
normal school : 

"An attempt was made to have the teachers in the normal 
supervise the teaching of their own particular branches in the 
training school, but this was found impossible and it was urged 
that special competent critic teachers be employed for supervision 
and criticism." 

The plan reported by one school furnishing information for 
the present study has much of merit in it. Each department holds 
itself responsible for making available for practice teachers, and 
seeing to it that they avail themselves of it, the material which can 
be made use of in the training school in the subject for which the 
department is responsible. The responsibility of the departmental 
teacher is to see to it that the practice teacher is making use of the 
material provided. The method of its use is in the hands of the 
critic teacher. This brings the departmental teachers into a very 
intimate relation with the practice teaching without encouraging 
at all upon the duties of the critic teacher, and at the same time 
relieves the critic teacher of a task which she ordinarily has to 
perform in addition to her other duties. 

The construction of the curriculum and writing of the course 
of study for the training school by normal-school teachers has the 
advantages which President Felmley points out : 

"The curriculum of the training school was Avritten by the vari- 
ous departments of the normal school and is by them from time 
to time revised in consultation with the training school teachers. 
We make this requirement * * * in order to keep the teach- 



59 

ers of the normal departments in constant touch with the train- 
ing department." 

This advantage is in addition to the benefit to the training 
school of having a well made curriculum and course of study, the 
importance of which Dr. C. A. MeMurry points out : 

"A training school requires a definite and well organized 
course of study. Inexperienced teachers cannot be allowed to wan- 
der at will through a haphazard course of study. The important 
topics in each study should be well selected and arranged before- 
hand by the most experienced and competent teachers. * * * 
This is indeed a fundamental problem for the whole faculty of a 
normal school, including heads of departments and critic teachers. 
The heads of departments, each in his special field, should be the 
best qualified people in the world to show up the full and adequate 
treatment of topics needed in the training school in geography, 
history, mathematics, literature, etc. This is the hardest problem 
we have to meet in the training school. People have taken it for 
granted that anybody (even young teachers) could do this, and 
nobody has done it. In fact, nobody has yet demonstrated the full 
ability to do it. The extent to which it has been attempted has 
shown its extreme value for securing training school efficiency." 1 

In many schools some contributions have probably been made 
by normal-school teachers, in an incidental way, to the course of 
study of the training school; in few has there been a systematic 
and thorough-going attack of the problem. It is one of the most 
promising of all of the means suggested for correlating the work 
of the training department and that of the other normal-school 
departments. 

Opinion expressed in the letters received is very much divided 
as to the importance of having normal-school teachers able and 
willing to teach demonstration lessons. One president says : "They 
do not teach demonstration lessons but there is no rule forbidding 
them to do so." Another says: "Every teacher in the normal 
school can and does teach children in the training school occas- 
ionally, some of them very frequently." A third writes: "None 
of our normal school teachers give demonstration lessons. It is 
not necessary that they should since critic teachers are always 
ready to teach for observation." Dr. Bagley includes among the 

1 Northern Illinois State Normal School Quarterly, May, 1915, pp 4-5. 



f>0 

qualifications of a normal-school teacher the two items of teaching 
skill and experience in teaching children. It is possible that a 
normal-school instructor might qualify in both and yet be unwill- 
ing to undertake to teach a demonstration lesson, and it might be 
a useless expenditure of energy on his part to undertake to do what 
a critic teacher could do equally as well and more easily. That 
the ability to teach children is one which can be used effectively 
by a normal-school teacher is beyond question. Dr. Bagley reports 
as an impressive experience the teaching on one day, by the teacher 
of history in the Ypsilanti normal school, of certain facts in his- 
tory to his normal school class, and the teaching by the same teacher 
of the same facts on the following day to a group of children, in 
the presence of the same normal school students. Every student 
who has worked in history at Teachers' College has been impressed 
by the ability of Professor Henry Johnson to teach history to chil- 
dren with the same skill with which he teaches his classes of adults. 

In addition to keeping normal-school teachers in contact with 
the problem of teaching children, the teaching of demonstration 
lessons adds to the weight which the normal school teacher's in- 
struction carries with students who know that the teacher has such 
skill in teaching children. It dignifies skill in teaching children 
in the eyes of normal-school students to see normal-school teachers 
making use of such skill. 

The relatively large number of teachers of special subjects, 
(drawing, manual training, music, household arts) who teach both 
normal-school and training-school classes is explained by Judd 
and Parker, who found the same situation in 1916, as follows: 

"The teachers of the so called special subjects * * * 
serve in both the normal school and in the practice school. In 
almost any small normal school, one teacher to teach each of these 
subjects in both schools ought to be sufficient. Each teacher, as 
a rule, should be required to do this instead of using a part of his 
or her time in the very expensive instruction of small groups of 
normal-school students in special curricula." 1 

Doubtless the suggested economy is in part the motive for 
this dual function on the part of these special teachers, but this 

1 Problems Involved in Standardizing State Normal Schools, 1916. pp. 
68-9. 



61 

explanation does not cover the several cases reported where the 
schools have a number of such teachers; — seventeen in the case of 
Normal, Illinois. The possible supplementary explanations that 
suggest themselves are: 

1. That there is less difference between teaching children 
and adults to draw, to cook, to sew, than there is between teaching 
English, science, history on the lower and higher levels. 

2. That there are no traditions back of these departments 
which differentiate sharply between elementary school work and 
work with adults. There is no feeling of condescension in teach- 
ing children. 

Whatever the explanation for the fact may be, the situation 
as it exists calls for a review of reasons why teachers of "academic" 
subjects cannot participate in the work of the training school as 
do the teachers of these special subjects. 

An example of what may be done in making normal-school 
teachers active advisers in the training school is the plan put into 
operation at Platteville, Wisconsin, by President Asa M. Eoyce, 
described as follows by Edgar F. Eiley, director of the training 
school : 

"In addition to the special teachers we have what are known 
as 'Consulting Supervisors'. These include regular teachers in 
the normal school, of arithmetic, geography, English and history. 
These people are assigned one hour a day to the training school. 
* * * These consulting supervisors visit classes and are then 
supposed to confer with the regular critic in charge and with the 
assistant principal or with the principal. The term 'consulting 
supervisor' suggests the character of their work. * * * Oc- 
casionally the principal has one of these consulting supervisors talk 
to the practice teachers or conduct a model lesson, or criticize a 
model lesson, or take a group of practice teachers for conference, 
the history teachers going to the history teacher, etc." 

It must be a rare situation where critic teachers and normal 
school teachers cannot be of mutual help; it is almost equally rare 
when anything like the maximum of help is given where there is 
no definite provision made for supplying situations in which help 
may be mutually given. There are probably no schools in which 
teachers from the normal-school departments will not confer, upon 
invitation, with the members of the training-school staff. But 



62 

there are many where such invitation is never given. It is quite 
possible that there might be some feeling of constraint and a lack 
of topics to confer upon if regular conferences were scheduled be- 
tween normal school teachers and training-school staff. But both 
conditions would unquestionably be changed if there were real dis- 
position to be mutually helpful. 

. The courses given by critic teachers in the normal school are, 
for the most part, methods and observation courses. Even in 
cases where no such courses are scheduled, the weekly conferences 
between critics and student teachers are practically equivalent to 
such courses. It is quite as important that there should be nor- 
mal-school courses given by critic teachers as that normal school 
teachers should participate in the work of the training school. 
Critic teachers get as quickly out of contact with the work of the 
other normal-school departments as do normal-school teachers with 
the work of the training department. To give courses to adult 
students is a stimulus to growth on the part of the training school 
teacher. 

Director John C. Werner of the training school at Albion, 
Idaho, says: 

"Each of the critic teachers, at some time during the year, gives 
at least one course in the normal school. We feel that there is 
great need for all normal-school teachers to come in close contact 
with the children in the training school by actual teaching some 
time during the year, and we feel that it is also vitally important 
that each critic teacher be closely related to the work of the normal 
school and its students by teaching classes in the normal school 
occasionally." 

President Black, of Ellensburg, Washington, tries to get for 
critic positions, persons having some specialty which they can teach 
in the normal school. By so doing he accomplishes the double 
purpose of keeping them in close touch with the normal school, 
and of being able to pay higher salaries than he could pay for critic 
work alone. 

The fact that critic teachers give courses in the normal school 
in the summer session in five schools where they do not do so dur- 
ing the regular term indicates that the courses which they offer are 
considered to be of especial value to teachers in service, since it is 



63 

such teachers who make up the larger part of the summer attend- 
ance. The condition which prevents regular courses being given 
by critic teachers during the regular term is the overcrowded pro- 
gram of those teachers. Any change which lightens that program 
will make possible the giving of some time by the critic teacher 
to instruction in the normal school. 

For normal-school teachers to determine the methods of in- 
struction in the training school, as two schools report that they do, 
seems, as stated, to be an undesirable imposition of theory upon 
practice. The more desirable situation would be a determination 
of methods by teachers of the normal-school departments and of 
"the training school working together in the same manner in which 
the course of study for the training school should be worked out. 

A field of common interest and activity for normal-school and 
training-school staff, which centers about the work of the training 
school, is the use of standard tests and scales. Only five schools 
report any cooperative activity in the use of these devices. Few 
schools will find it possible to undertake work in the research as- 
pect as is done at Emporia, Kansas, or to attempt the very wide 
service in the use of the tests in communities of the state as is 
done at Emporia. But every school should be very much alive to 
the development of these useful means for determining the attain- 
ment of pupils and the efficiency of teaching. In most normal 
schools, interest in these tests is confined almost wholly to the 
members of the department of education. The critic teachers are 
probably more familiar with them than are most of the normal- 
school teachers. 

At Madison, South Dakota, a very thoroughgoing survey was 
made in 1917-18 of the work of the training school, under the 
direction of Miss Candis Nelson, director of training, with the 
cooperation of the training school staff. The results are published 
as a bulletin of the normal school under date of July, 1918. No 
member of the normal-school faculty other than the training-school 
teachers took part in the survey, which involved the use of many 
of the standard tests. But it suggests a sort of undertaking in 



64 

which a number of teachers both within and witnout the training 
school might very profitably take part. 

While the derivation of these standard tests should be pri- 
marily a function of department of education in universities and 
normal colleges, they should be given to the students in normal 
schools as part of the courses in the various subjects to which they 
apply rather than in a single course given in the department of 
education. This means that each department will be familiar with 
the tests that have been devised for its special subject and will in- 
clude in the subject-matter courses (or in the methods courses, 
if they are given separately) exercises which will give sufficient 
experience with the tests and their uses to enable the student to 
use them intelligently and to be guarded against their misuse. 

Cooperation of normal-school teachers and critic teachers in 
giving courses in observation, as reported by eleven schools, serves 
both to bring the normal-school teacher into contact with the train- 
ing school and the critic teacher into contact with normal-school 
students, provided that the normal-school teacher and critic ar- 
range the observation jointly and both take part in the discussion 
of the lesson seen. Under any other conditions observation repre- 
sents considerable waste. The discussion, under the leadership of 
one teacher, of a lesson taught by another, the teacher who taught 
the lesson not being present, is unfair to the absent teacher and 
less profitable to the observers than is a discussion in which that 
teacher takes part, since only she can know the "why" for the de- 
tails of the lesson and because she will be willing to point out the 
weak points in the lesson seen as another teacher might hesitate 
to do. 

The ability to undertake these cooperative enterprises which 
bring training-school teachers and teachers in other normal-school 
departments into closer relations, is an important qualification for 
normal school teachers. Judd and Parker said in 1916 1 : 

"Among the most important characteristic of a normal-school 
faculty from the standpoint of serving the purposes of the state in 
training teachers are (a) the degree of cooperative interest manifested 
by the faculty in the training of prospective teachers for the real, con- 
crete, detailed tasks which they will undertake when they begin to 



1 Problems involved in Standardizing State Normal Schools, 1916, p. 65. 



65 

teach, and (b) the competence of teachers to give such training. 
Normal-school teachers should be more interested in the regular daily 
work of public schools than in anything else, and they should be 
■willing and able to cooperate heartily in giving students training for 
such work. The most important measure of the efficiency of a faculty 
that is composed of competent individuals is the extent to which this 
cooperative interest dominates the work of the normal school." 

These writers go on in the same paragraph to say : 
"Neither the competence of the individuals composing a faculty 
nor its cooperative interest in normal-school tasks can be fairly 
judged, as a rule, from printed catalogs or reports or from answers 
to questionnaires." 

It is because this impossibility is fully realized that there is 
no table given here in which schools studied are listed each with 
the type and amount of participation which have been reported. 
The purpose of this section is not to find out what each school is 
doing and to compare one school with another as to the degree in 
which cooperation of departments is present. The purpose is to 
suggest a list, based upon what is being done in as many schools 
as it has been possible to study, of types of cooperation which are 
being used, in the hope that such a list may be useful in suggest- 
ing to persons interested in this problem, ways not yet tried in the 
particular school with which each is connected in which fuller 
cooperation may be brought about. 

Dr. Bagley summarizes the case for participation in training 
school work by normal-school teachers and in the work of other 
normal school departments by training school teachers, as follows : 

"The great advantage of a professional school lies in the fact that 
it can concentrate its work upon a single objective or upon a group 
of related objectives. In other words, it can organize all its activities 
into real curricula. It can articulate and integrate its courses, it can 
insure from every instructor and every department of study a maxi- 
mum contribution to the common problem; it can even capitalize . the 
life of the school itself in the interest of the purposes for which the 
school exists. If the professional school does not do these things, it 
misses a golden opportunity." 

These efforts made by normal schools to professionalize the 
courses which make up their curricula by so administering them 
that they bring the student into constant contact with the training 
department have been found to be scattered. No one school is 
doing everything that is being done somewhere among the schools 
studied. It is unreasonable to expect that every school shall do 
— 5 E S N 



66 

everything as well as any school does anything, but it is reasonable 
to expect that every school shall attempt to do as well as it can 
the things which other similarly situated schools have found it 
profitable to do in accomplishing the purpose which is common to 
all. There should, however, be less difference in the sorts of things 
done in normal schools than there now is. Individual differ- 
ences among schools are inevitable and in some degree desirable, 
but it is time that some degree of agreement was reached as to 
what is the best way to accomplish the task that normal schools 
have undertaken. 

Upon the basis of the review just made of what various schools 
are doing, it is proposed to suggest in detail how the varieties of 
student contact with the training department and of participation 
by normal-school teachers other than the training-school staff, in 
the work of the training school, which have been found among the 
schools studied, might under favorable conditions be put into oper- 
ation in a single school. 

Let it be assumed that this school is located in a city of 10,000 
people; that it graduates from two year curricula 120 students a 
year; that it has a school for observation and practice connected 
with it and that the schools of the city are available for apprentice 
teaching. 

Let the curricula offered be assumed to be the three two-year 
curricula outlined under sections twelve to thirty-two of the Car- 
negie Foundation "Curricula Designed for the Professional Pre- 
paration of Teachers for American Public Schools." 

The first term of work is identical for all the three curricula. 
During this term, contact with the training department is inci- 
dental to the work of the course "Introduction to Teaching." 
Students will see teaching in the primary, intermediate, and gram- 
mar grades. The teaching seen will be discussed under the direc- 
tion of whoever has charge of this course and of the teachers who 
teach the lessons seen, particular attention being given to analysis 
of the qualities which these teachers find essential in persons who 
undertake work in their respective departments. During the 
second half of the course students should make tentative election 



67 

of the curricula which they intend to follow and should then be 
given assignments under the direction of the critic teachers in the 
corresponding departments of the training school, for the purpose 
of becoming acquainted with pupils of the particular age which 
it is their intention to prepare to teach. 

Assuming that one half of the first-year students take the 
course "Introduction to Teaching" at one time, there will be sixty 
students for whom to provide forms of participation. Let it be 
assumed that one of the city schools is near enough to be used for 
this purpose as well as the observation and practice school of the 
normal school. 

All of the participation is to be arranged for and reported back 
to the person in charge of the course "Introduction to Teaching/' 
who may well be the head of the training department; but it may 
be work connected with some one of the other courses that the 
student is carrying during the same term. 

Students in the course in school and personal hygiene may be 
made responsible for the lighting of all classrooms in the elemen- 
tary schools for certain hours of the day, and for ventilation, if 
heat and ventilation are not cared for by an automatic system. 
They may be made responsible for the oversight of the children's 
clothing, wraps, rubbers, and lunches in the lower grades. The 
cloakrooms may be put in their charge. If medical or dental ex- 
aminations are going on. students may act as assistants to the ex- 
aminers, doing nothing more important, perhaps, than taking 
children through the halls to and from the examiners' office as they 
are wanted, or recording data for the examiners. 

Students from the course in physical training and games may 
be used in the supervision of playground activities of children. If 
each room has its own recreation period, sixteen students could be 
so provided for in each school each day if no other form of partici- 
pation could be provided. Intramural sports could be arranged 
and carried on under the supervision of these students, acting under 
the oversight of the physical-training director. 

Students in the course in music could take part in the music 
work in the grades. Those able to play the piano could act as 



68 

accompanists for room singing if a piano is available for this sing- 
ing; could play for gymnasium work and kindergarten plays. 

The course in English could arrange participation. Classes 
in the elementary school should be observed by students for the 
purpose of listing errors in oral English and their frequency. 
These should be reported to the English teacher and plans made 
for campaigns for more correct English, such as a "Better English 
Week," and the plans carried into effect when perfected. 

Students in library technique could be made responsible for 
helping upper grade pupils in finding material upon subjects con- 
nected with their school work, or could be asked by teachers to 
place in the schoolroom on certain days appropriate material for 
use in the study of the topic that is to be taken up on that day. 
In the same way students in biology could be called upon to pro- 
vide materials for nature study work and to arrange for and to 
carry out simple demonstrations. 

Students from the course in handwriting could do blackboard 
writing for the room teachers in the elementary schools. The 
upper part of the blackboard in primary rooms is not available 
for pupils' use and may be kept filled with stanzas of poems with 
which the children may well become familiar; these should be 
changed frequently. In the upper grades there are rather ex- 
tended assignments and occasional outlines to be written on the 
board. These same students may be given pupils' written exer- 
cises to grade by use of one of the standard handwriting scales 
and may do individual work with pupils whose writing needs par- 
ticular attention. 

It must be fully understood that this student "assistance" in 
the training schools does not mean any lightening of the work 
of the teachers "assisted." The students concerned will be im- 
mature and inexperienced. Their zeal may be great but their skill 
will be slight. Even when more mature students are concerned it 
is safer to assume that every additional student who goes into the 
training school increases the work of the training-school staff. 
It will be an unwise administration which considers that by "re- 
lieving" the critic teacher of the necessity for doing a part of the 
necessary blackboard writing, of some recess supervision, of some 



69 

care for materials, her work is being really made easier, for the 
work of the student should be primarily educative to him, and 
should, in consequence, be carefully supervised. To carry out 
such a program as is being here outlined would require a large 
training-school staff, and not fewer than two eight-room city 
schools in addition to the school for observation and practice con- 
nected with the normal school. 

In the second term of the first year, psychology will be given 
as part of all curricula. This course should involve a maximum 
of contact with the children of the training schools. Unless the 
position of psychology in curricula for the professional preparation 
of teachers is to become as precarious as that of history of edu- 
cation, some very decided changes from the sort of work which is 
being done in the larger number of courses in psychology must be 
made. A course in psychology whose organizing principle is the 
list of chapter headings in a textbook in general psychology will 
present little occasion for the observation of teaching or of child 
activities outside of the classroom. The course which should be 
given is one which will be illuminated by observation of children 
and will in turn illuminate such observation. The way to become 
acquainted with children is to be with children. Psychology can 
analyze, interpret and make significant the data gathered by obser- 
vation but cannot serve as a substitute for it. It is being found 
worth while to bring psychology courses into close relation with 
training-school work where it is being tried. More teachers of 
psychology in normal schools need to be stimulated to make the 
experiment. 

The first topic listed for consideration in this course as out- 
lined in the curricula being considered, is instinctive tendencies. 
Students should observe children in the classroom, on the play- 
ground, in as great a variety of situations as possible for the pur- 
pose of discovering common, apparently spontaneous ways in which 
children behave apart from training, which may be made the basis 
for class discussion of unlearned tendencies. They should try to 
discover in the observed behavior of children the modified forms 
of these tendencies which have resulted from training. They 
should try to discover in the teaching of the critic teachers the 



70 

use which the teachers are making of their knowledge of the in- 
stinctive tendencies of children. 

The second topic in the course is habit formation. The work 
of the elementary school is full of illustrative material for this 
topic. Drill lessons should be seen and the method discussed in 
respect to how the laws of learning are taken advantage of; draw- 
ing lessons and writing lessons, manual arts and certain games 
will illustrate the acquisition of manual dexterities; schoolroom 
routine will show habits in various stages of formation. 

Memory, association, and economy of learning, the third topic 
of the course, will find as ample illustrative material as that avail- 
able for habit formation. To the student already familiar with 
the laws of learning any lesson that is well taught will show 
these laws in operation. He should try to find how the child tries 
to remember when unassisted, what sort of associations he forms, 
how he studies and how the teacher helps him to study different 
sorts of material more economically. He will find that what is 
commonly spoken of as "teaching the child to study" must be an- 
alyzed into "teaching the child to study arithmetic," "teaching the 
child to study geography," "teaching the child to read a book," 
and giving him special skills in working with all of the different 
sorts of material which make up the elementary-school curriculum. 
Observation should be carried on over so extended a period that the 
rate of learning and the pauses in improvement — the "plateaus" — 
may be observed. Losses due to incidental absences in the cases 
of individuals, and in the case of the whole class, over a week-end 
or after a holiday should be observed in subjects where the measure- 
ment of attainment before and after the interruption is possible. 
If different classes are doing similar work under different condi- 
tions as to distribution of learning periods, a comparative study 
may be made. The presence of these students of psychology in 
the training school may serve as a stimulus to training-school staff 
and department of education to attempt simple experiments in 
learning which would not otherwise have been undertaken. 

The fourth topic is the affective life. The same observations 
which gave data for the discussion of instinctive tendencies will 



71 

furnish material for the discussion of this topic. A study of the 
books which boys and girls of various ages read from choice will 
give an interesting index to the things which make an emotional 
appeal to them. Members of the psychology class who are also 
taking the course in children's literature during the same term 
should be able, in connection with telling stories to children, to 
get data upon the emotional life of these children, of interest to 
the class in psychology. 

Topic five is the thought processes. Students may set for 
themselves the task of finding the answer in specific instances to 
the question which teachers ask at times with some degree of irri- 
tation, — "How did you happen to think that?" — when a pupil 
has given expression to what is, by adult standards, a wild idea. 
Students should become habituated to thinking of lesson procedure 
in terms of what stimulus-response bonds are being formed and to 
analyzing thought processes in terms of the bonds concerned. They 
will get material to be so analyzed by observation of lessons where 
thinking and learning are going on. A third grade class reading 
"Alice in Wonderland," reading perfectly so far as correct pro- 
nunciation and expressive inflection are concerned, will give inter- 
esting and instructive insight into what goes on in the minds of 
children as they read, when questioned as to the significance of 
the descriptive words of which the story is full. A more scientific 
type of data on thought processes may be obtained by the use of 
the simpler completion tests and of appropriate tests from the 
Binet scale, which the class should see used, although the course 
is too short to make it possible for students to acquire the tech- 
nique of testing for themselves. In addition, much of interest and 
of value can be contributed by students who, because of a combi- 
nation of personal aptitudes and opportunity, become so well ac- 
quainted with particular children of various ages that these chil- 
dren talk freely of what they are thinking about. 

"Observation and Participation" in the first term of the sec- 
ond year may become the correlating center for participation in 
the work of the training department as the course "Introduction 
to Teaching" was the center during the first term of the first year. 



72 

The forms of participation will be determined in part by the work 
being done in connection with the subject-matter courses. The 
participation should be pointed very directly toward practice teach- 
ing. The observation and discussion groups should be arranged 
to separate the persons following the different curricula. Students 
will be assigned in groups of two or three to particular grades 
and subjects for at least a part of the term; they will prepare the 
lessons as if for teaching and observe the class as taught by the 
critic teacher or, on some occasions, by student teachers. They 
will sit in the class as members of the class, being called upon at 
times to contribute to the class discussion and to lead the discus- 
sion, as is done in the Wisconsin "Directed Teaching" plan. 1 

On two or three occasions each should teach the class, after 
carefully supervised preparation, with every condition that can 
be controlled made as favorable as possible, so that the first actual 
teaching experience shall be a successful one. If possible each 
student should do a week or more of such carefully supervised 
teaching for one hour a day in preparation for the more extended 
practice teaching to follow. Each may do as much work as can be 
arranged for with individual pupils who need help or with very 
small groups of pupils. 

In the second term of the second year practically the whole of 
the students' time and energy is to be given to practice teaching, 
the courses in class management and the technique of teaching 
and in the technique of tests and scales being so conducted that 
they become a part of the teaching conferences. Each student 
teacher will have two hours of teaching daily from the beginning 
of the term and before the end of the term will teach a complete 
half day for a week or more. 

The department of education will contribute to the practice 
teaching by supervising the testing of results; by participating in 
conferences with practice teachers where particular problems of 
teaching are discussed and current literature of education reviewed. 
All members of the department should keep such office hours that 
practice teachers who find themselves confronted by any peculiar 

1 18th Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education. 



73 

difficulty in their teaching, or are in need of help in planning a 
particular piece of work, may avail themselves of expert help. 

In the plan for the "Administration of the Suggested Cur- 
ricula" which accompanies the curricula from which are chosen 
the three which the school under discussion is assumed to be 
offering, it is planned that "each department of instruction would 
be held responsible for certain phases of training-school super- 
vision." This would insure the maximum contribution by all of 
the normal-school departments to the work of the student teach- 
ers. The distribution of responsibility between critic teachers and 
department teachers has been reported, by the schools studied, 
to be difficult. The most promising arrangement found is that 
in which the normal-school departments devote their principal at- 
tention in connection with practice teaching, to making available 
all the material possible in their respective subjects for the use of 
student teachers, leaving to the critic teachers the supervision of 
the use of this material in teaching. 

In addition to this service, the appropriate departments will 
be called upon to give assistance in correcting defects which the 
student may show in his preparation. If the student is handi- 
capped in his teaching by a poor voice or faulty enunciation he 
will be sent to the teacher of reading and voice training for special 
corrective work. If his posture before the class is bad the physical 
training department will be called upon to help in correcting the 
defect. 

Each student teacher will be kept continuously informed as 
strength and the weaknesses of his work, by means of score sheets 
which contain detailed analysis of the factors that contribute to 
good teaching. Students should be required to score their own 
work as an encouragement to self-criticism. Critic teachers in 
conference with student teachers will try to develop this ability 
in self-criticism and will point out and commend the excellencies 
of work done; will point out weaknesses which the student has 
failed to realize; and will by advice, by suggestion, and by demon- 
stration show how defects are to be overcome and teaching prob- 
lems met. The student will be led to discuss his teaching in terms 



74 

of its effect upon pupils, and to watch carefully for the results 
which his teaching is producing in "accessory and concomitant" 
learning as well as in "primary" learning. 

The special courses of the different curricula will occupy most 
of the students' time during the second and third terms of the 
first year and a part of the time during the first term of the sec- 
ond year, each having to do with specific problems of certain grades 
of the elementary school. They will be conducted, through the 
cooperation, of critic teachers and subject-matter teachers, in close 
relation with the work of the appropriate grades. Both observation 
and participation will be provided for in these courses. Students 
in industrial art will take part in primary hand work; students 
in art courses for intermediate and primary grades will make 
blackboard drawings illustrating reading and literature work for 
these grades and will give assistance in pupil projects in the carry- 
ing out of which drawing can be made useful. The literature 
course and the reading and voice-culture courses will combine in 
preparing students to read and to tell stories to small groups of 
training school pupils. Geography and nature-study courses will 
give opportunity for collection and arrangement of materials for 
use in training-school classes in these subjects. 

In the work of the teachers' courses in upper grade work, par- 
ticipation will be less easy to arrange and observation of expert 
teaching of the subjects will form a more prominent part of the 
contact with the training school afforded by these courses. Here 
the "Directed Teaching" plan of participation already referred 
to can be used especially effectively. 

Courses such as "Types of Industry and Occupation" and 
the "summarizing" courses of the third term of the second year 
will involve little or no direct contact with the training depart- 
ment. 

The general objection to putting into operation such a pro- 
gram as that just outlined is that it would mean that the train- 
ing schools would be completely overrun with normal-school stu- 
dents. The only aspect of this objection which deserves serious 
consideration is whether the presence of these students in the 



75 

training school would seriously interfere with good work on the 
part of pupils. The training schools are conducted for the benefit 
of two groups: the pupils, and the students of the normal school. 
The welfare of the second must not be allowed to jeopardize that 
of the first. Unless it can be definitely shown that the work of 
pupils in the training school suffers by reason of the presence in 
the school of many normal-school students, the objection that the 
training school will be "overrun" is not a valid objection. 

It may be objected that the training school cannot take care 
of so many students. The answer to this is that training-school 
facilities must be increased. If normal-school administrators and 
teachers really believe what they have repeatedly asserted, namely, 
that the training school is the center and heart of the normal 
school, they should spend more effort in making the training-school 
facilities fit the work that is to be done instead of being content 
to cut the work to fit the facilities that happen to be easily avail- 
able. A campaign of educaion will have to be carried on to change 
the situation described by the director of the training department 
in one of the Wisconsin Formal Schools. He says : 

"The training school is not the factor in the normal school 
that it should be, and one of the reasons for that fact with us is; 
it is not the advertising proposition that other departments of the 
school are. It is much easier to get money for a football field than 
it is to get money for needed furniture and apparatus in the train- 
ing school. We need a training school building here to house the 
grades and junior high school, but we can get $100,000 for a 
science hall easier than we could get $25,000 for a training school." 
The public, from whom must come the funds for the support of 
teacher-training institutions, must be stimulated to look upon the 
training department as the one part of the normal school which 
above all others must be well equipped, as it now looks upon the 
clinic facilities of the medical school and upon the laboratory and 
shop equipment of the engineering school. If more funds become 
available for the preparation of teachers, a generous share should 
be devoted to providing needed training facilities with adequate 
staff paid adequate salaries. 

It may be urged that normal school teachers would be little 
inclined so to conduct their courses that such contacts with the 



76 

training school as have been outlined would be involved. The 
president of a New England normal school says : 

"This school, with some teachers who have been here thirty- 
five years, finds it necessary to employ normal-school teachers in 
the training school in over-limited ways. As new teachers take 
the place of older ones they are taking up the training-school 
work." 

The evidence of the preceding sections shows that there are teach- 
ers to be found who are willing and able to carry out the sort of 
program outlined above. In too many schools of all grades the 
welfare of pupils and students has been too often sacrificed by 
administrators who find it easier to bear responsibility for having 
reduced the educational opportunities of students and pupils than 
to bear the emotional strain of removing or very sharply stimu- 
lating inefficient teachers. Normal schools need teachers who have 
particular abilities and interests, and it is essential that competent 
persons be sought and offered such inducements that they will 
come into and stay in normal school work. Any hardship or in- 
convenience involved for persons already teaching in normal 
schools, who cannot do the sort of work that needs to be done in 
a school for the professional preparation of teachers, is to be re- 
gretted; but, while such suffering may be acute at the moment, 
it will be an economy of suffering to have it concentrated rather 
than to have it long continued in the form of irritation and dis- 
taste attendant upon remaining in the sort of work for which one 
is not well fitted. 

To the program proposed it may be objected that to have so 
many persons giving courses which involve contact with the train- 
ing department would bring about duplication, confusion, and 
congestion of work in the training school. Such need not be the 
case if the work is planned carefully well in advance by all teach- 
ers and departments involved. There is too much completely in- 
dependent departmental work in most normal schools; too little 
occasion for interdepartmental conferences and joint planning. 

The objection is sure to be made that normal-school teach- 
ers are already so overloaded with work that the additional con- 
ference hours and the oversight of students who undertake work 



77 

in the training department would be impossible. Available sta- 
tistics do show that normal-school teachers very generally teach 
more than eighteen hours a week 1 , but there is no available evi- 
dence that the teaching week involves over forty-five hours of 
work, which would be the normal amount if it is assumed that 
fifteen hours is the maximal teaching load and that each hour of 
teaching involves two hours of preparation or other related work. 
Normal-school teachers do comparatively little research work. 
Their tenure is long. Teachers who teach the same courses for a 
number of years tend less and less to revise and add to the courses 
as they are repeated. If each teacher who is now devoting forty- 
five or more hours a week to school work were to be excused from 
taking any part, it is not improbable that there would still be, in 
many schools, teachers available with a sufficient margin of un- 
assigned time to carry out the proposed program. If not, then 
governing boards must be convinced of the desirability of some 
such program and of the necessity for more teachers with more 
free time to carry it out. 

A large number of administrative problems would be involved 
in putting into effect such a program. "Administrative difficul- 
ties will be encountered in operating any set of specific and pre- 
scribed curricula when these curricula are constructed with the 
educational needs as the central feature to which everything else 
must be subordinated/' 2 School administrators have two import- 
ant tasks. One is, to fit the work of the school to the facilities 
provided by governing boards and by legislative bodies. The 
second is, the preparation of programs of procedure for the guid- 
ance of these boards and legislative bodies in the appropriation of 
funds. To know that certain sorts of work are being done better 
in other schools than in that for which he is responsible may be 
but a source of irritation to a normal-school president discharg- 
ing the first duty under the serious limitations that inadequate 
resources impose. The same knowledge is the most helpful that 
the president can have in carrying out his second responsibility. 
Governing boards need to be informed of better ways of carrying 

1 Bureau of Education Bulletin, 1916, No. 12, p. 18. 

2 Curricula Designed for the Professional Preparation of Teachers for 
American Public Schools. Carnegie Foundation, 1917. 



78 

on normal-school work. Most of these boards are anxious to make 
of the school or schools under their care the best professional 
schools possible. It is not an impossible ideal to set up, that every 
school shall try to do everything toward the professional prepara- 
tion of teachers as well as any school of its class does anything 
that has been found to have value in such professional prepara- 
tion. 



70 



V. 

HOW TRAINING DEPARTMENTS TRY TO TEACH 
STUDENT TEACHERS TO TEACH. 

Every person who has any ability to communicate with other 
persons has some ability to teach. Small children teach one an- 
other. Primitive people teach each rising generation the tribal 
skills, ideals, beliefs, and modes of conduct. Adults of all levels 
of culture develop, without specialized training, considerable abil- 
ity to teach. Shop foremen and stage directors, nurse maids and 
sales managers, do much teaching without having had special 
teacher preparation. Any experience through which an individual 
adds to the skills or knowledge which, he possesses adds to his 
ability as a teacher in the sense that it increases the range of 
things that it is possible for him, in some fashion, to teach to 
others. Certain special experiences may add to the ability to 
impart skills and knowledge to learners. 

Any discussion of addition to teaching ability must take into 
consideration the fact that such additions are never, in the case 
of normal adults, additions beginning at zero and bringing the 
ability up to an amount which is equal to the sum of the additions 
made, but are increments to an already possessed ability to teach, 
of an amount which may be widely different in two persons, neither 
of whom has made any conscious effort to acquire teaching skill. 

The controversy as to whether it is sufficient for a teacher 
to know his subject-matter in order to be prepared to teach may 
be reduced to two questions: (1) Has the person in question, 
by reason of experiences through which he has passed before under- 
taking the study of a subject, already developed considerable abil- 
ity to teach to others what he knows? (2) Will his value as a 
teacher be more greately increased by giving him acquaintance 
with more things which he may teach with such skill as he already 



80 

by chance possesses, or by giving him some experiences which will 
increase his ability to teach what he already knows? 

Xormal schools attempt to increase teaching ability both by 
adding to the range of knowledge which the student possesses and 
by increasing his teaching skill. The departments of the normal 
school other than the training department have practically entire 
responsibility for the first of these; they have responsibility for 
the second in so far as instruction in the ways in which teaching 
should be done can be made to operate when teaching is actually 
being done and in so far as ideas can be given and ways of think- 
ing established which will work themselves out in certain desirable 
teaching acts. The training department is concerned almost 
wholly with the second attempt. It takes the student with what- 
ever degree of teaching skill he had when he entered the normal 
school, increased by certain experiences in the normal school, and 
places him in situations which will bring about such further ad- 
ditions as are possible. 

The present section is an analysis of the means whereby the 
members of the training-school staff attempt to improve the teach- 
ing ability of the students who come to the training department 
as practice teachers. The data have been gathered by inquiry 
addressed to heads of training departments and to critic teachers. 
Usable material has been contributed by thirty-seven heads of 
training departments and by forty-eight critic teachers, represent- 
ing a total of thirty-nine schools. 

Simple exercise of an imperfect skill — mere repetition or 
practice — does not make perfect. Thorndike says: 

"The law of habit is supposed to be that 'practice makes per- 
fect/ or that the nervous system 'grows to the modes in which it 
is exercised/ But practice without zeal — with equal comfort at 
success and failure — does not make perfect and the nervous system 
grows away from the modes in which it is exercised with resulting 
discomfort." 1 

The training school is organized not merely to give the normal- 
school student some experience in teaching. It is entirely possible 
for a teacher to become poorer and poorer as a teacher the more 

1 E. L. Thorndike, Educational Psychology, Vol. Ill, p. 22. 



81 

he teaches, provided that good teaching gives him no satisfaction 
or that he lacks ability to discriminate his good from his poor 
teaching. Or, having this ability to distinguish the excellent from 
the poor teaching, and being satisfied by the better, improvement 
might be very slow unless conditions were such that multiple re- 
sponses were encouraged and the situation so weighted in favor 
of the more satisfying responses that they would occur sooner than 
by pure chance. 

The situation is supposed to have been so weighted in the case 
of the normal-school student by the courses in theory of education, 
by courses in methods, and by the excellence of the teaching which 
he has himself received in the normal school. His judgment of 
good in contrast with poor teaching has been developed in some 
degree by exercise in the discussion of observation lessons. To 
these students, possessed of some degree of teaching skill, able to 
judge with some degree of accuracy what teaching is good and 
what is poor, predisposed in some degree toward doing the correct 
thing in a teaching situation, mora or less familiar with the ma- 
terial of the school curriculum and, supposedly, eager to become 
good teachers, it is the business of the training school to give the 
sort of experiences in actual teaching which will do most to add 
to that teaching ability. 

All of the schools furnishing material for this study mention 
lesson plans as a means whereby they try to help the student 
teacher to teach successfully. The least elaborate of these involves 
three heads: 

1. What I am going to teach. 

2. Why I am going to teach it. 

3. < How I shall proceed. 

Such a lesson plan has the merit of simplicity and involves 
the answering of one very essential question which is omitted from 
most other types of plans, namely, why the lesson is to be taught. 
But a plan requiring a more detailed ordering of method and ma- 
terial is probably a greater help to the student in preparing for 
the lesson, and, what is equally important, gives a form of lesson 
outline which is more easily checked by the critic teacher. 
— 6 E S N 



82 



Six schools report that they use Strayer's form for lesson 
plans. Six others also use two-column plans; outline of subject 
matter in one column, outline of proposed methods in the second. 
The following instruction sheets for writing plans, used at Stev- 
ens Point, Wisconsin, indicate the nature of these plans in their 
more elaborate form. The two pages represent the two pages of 
especially ruled paper upon which the plans are written. 



This side for subject matter. 
Do not write | 
in this space. 

1. 

4. 

6. 



10. 



13. 



15. 



17. 



2. Subject 



Grade 

Date 

Name of Textbook 7. Page 

Illustrative material; maps, pictures, specimens. 



Preparation. See McMurry's Method of the Recitation 
Chapter VI. 

You should write here the outline of material 
that you plan to call up in the mind of the pupil in 
order to enable him to understand the new subject 
you are to present. The outline should be arranged 
logically. 



Subject matter. 

Here you should write out the subject matter 
that you are to present. All new material should 
appear here in logically arranged order, the order in 
which you are to present it. 



Generalization. State the generalization you expect 
the pupils to reach, in the exact language you will 
have them use. 



Application: 
use. 



State here the material you intend to 



83 



11. 



12. 



14. 



16. 



Name of practice teacher 

Name of critic teacher 

Teacher's aim; both general and specific. The 
general aim should be given on first outline and 
the specific aim should be given each day. 



Opposite the outline of Preparation should be 
written the questions you intend to use in order 
to call up the known which will assist in un- 
derstanding the known and unknown. These 
questions should appear in the same logical 
manner as in your outline. 



Pupil's aim. See McMurry's Method of the Reci- 
tation for characteristics of pupil's aim; pp. 
107-115. 



Presentation. Here should appear your method 
of presenting the subject matter outlined on the 
opposite page. Enough questions should appear 
here to indicate the kind of questions you in- 
tend to ask. As nearly as possible keep the 
questions on this side opposite the matter on 
which they are based in your outline. 



Write the questions you will ask to get the pupils 
to state the Generalization. 



This side for method. 
Do not write 
in this space. 



18. Assignment. "Write the assignment. 



84 

Accompanying the directions for making plans is a list of sug- 
gestions by the principal, Mr. Hyer, from which the following 
paragraph is taken: 

"It should be remembered that the lesson plan is not a 'sacred 
thing' and no harm will come to the teacher who violates the most 
carefully made 'lesson plan' in the interests of his pupils. That 
'the best laid plans o' mice and men gang aft a-gley' should not 
be forgotten by the teacher. A well organized lesson plan is evi- 
dence that the teacher has thought through the lesson which he 
intends to present and has planned his method of attack and pro- 
cedure, but when he comes to present the lesson to his pupils, they 
become a very vital factor in the matter, and many changes may 
be demanded in the plan. A wide awake class will present many 
teaching opportunities that the best teacher cannot foresee, but 
the fact that one has to change his subject matter or his method 
does not in the least lessen the value to the teacher of careful 
thought and planning in preparation of the lesson. A carefully 
thought out, well organized lesson plan is worthy of the best efforts 
of any teacher, and will repay in intellectual stimulus and develop- 
ment every honest effort put forth in preparing the plan." 

The suggestion that the lesson plan is not a "sacred thing" 
needs emphasis in training departments. Among the factors 
which are taken into consideration by one of the schools studied 
in grading the work of student teachers is "Fidelity to lesson 
plan." This item might be a proper one, representing a check 
upon the young teacher's tendency to wander into wasteful digres- 
sions, were it balanced by a second item, "Ability to deviate from 
plan when occasion arises." A difficult element in the practice 
teaching situation which the critic teacher has to deal with is to 
require a plan sufficiently detailed to enable the student teacher 
to know very definitely, before he meets his class, what he intends 
to do, without allowing the student to be so committed to his plan 
that he cannot vary from it as conditions warrant. 

In the schools studied, plans are submitted for the approval 
of critic teachers from two days to a week in advance of the teach- 
ing of the lesson. In three schools it is reported that, during the 
advanced stages of practice teaching, plans are not required. One 
director of training adds, "Unless teaching becomes disjointed, in 
which case the writing of plans is resumed." 



85 

One school reports the use of plans involving the five formal 
steps. Two others use a modification of these steps. The fol- 
lowing form of lesson plan is fairly representative of those used 
in many schools. 

FORM FOR LESSON PLAN. 
Lesson No Date 



Subject of day's work. 
I. Aim: (In definite statement not topic form.) 
II. Basis assumed: (That which the teacher assumes the pupil 
must know and does know as a basis for comprehending the 
new lesson.) 

III. Preparation: (Recall of facts, creating atmosphere for particu- 

lar work; stimulating class by giving incentive for day's work; 
statement of pupil's aim by teacher or pupils.) 

IV. Presentation: 1. Thought steps, in statement forms, logical 

order, and general summary. 2. Methods or devices; pivotal 
questions and special devices numbered to correspond with 
parallel thought steps. 
V. Assignment: 1. For class study period. 2. General statement 
of problems for next teaching lesson. 

Since students, when they take regular teaching positions, will 
probably not write lesson plans it is doubtless wise in the later 
practice teaching to reduce plan-writing to a very simple statement 
of what is to be done from day to day. But it will be a very im- 
portant contribution to the improvement of teaching in schools in 
general if students can, while in normal schools, be so impressed 
with the necessity and the helpfulness of writing careful plans 
that they will, after leaving school, continue to write some sort 
of plan for every lesson. The simpler the form of plan used in 
the normal school the greater the possibility of habituating stu- 
dents to such plan-writing as will be continued after graduation. 

The characteristic feature of the practice-school effort to im- 
prove student teaching is the conference. Every school furnish- 
ing information reports at least one regular conference between 
student teachers and critic teachers each week. Fifteen mention 
daily conferences and probably in other schools there are consul- 
tations for at least a few minutes between student teacher and 
supervisor before or after the lesson is taught, or both, which 
are not dignified by the name of conference but which constitute, 
in the judgment of at least two critics, the time when the most 



86 

effective work in criticism and suggestion is done. The length 
of these informal daily conferences as reported by sixty-three 
seniors in the Eastern Illinois State Normal School varies from 
three to fifty minutes, the median length being eleven minutes. 

It did not require a special investigation to bring out the 
fact that conferences are held between critic teachers and student 
teachers. The number of hours given to such conferences does not 
vary significantly in the different schools, and may safely be esti- 
mated as being all that the critics can possibly find time for. The 
interesting item for investigation is what happens in the confer- 
ences. 

In an attempt to find out what goes on in the conferences 
the heads of training departments were asked to request critic 
teachers to state as definitely as possible how they attempt to im~ 
prove the work of student teachers. Many of the directors of 
training considered that they were giving satisfactory information 
when they reported the number of conferences that critics had 
with student teachers but detailed replies have been received from 
forty-eight critic teachers. The following is a summary of the 
methods used in trying to modify and improve the work of stu- 
dents : 

1. When the student is assigned to a class he observes the 
teaching of the critic for some clays, writes plans as if he were to 
teach the lesson each day, and after each lesson, discusses his plan 
and the plan used by the critic. 

2. When the student begins teaching, in a conference before 
the lesson is taught suggestions are made as to desirable changes 
in the plan. Additional material and alternative methods are sug- 
gested. The student teacher is reminded of the weaknesses of the 
pupils as shown in the work of the preceding recitation and of the 
necessity for strengthening these points before proceeding. Faults 
in the teaching of the preceding lesson are brought to the atten- 
tion of the student by means of a written critique of that lesson 
or by verbal criticism. Commendation of some bit of work well 
done in the preceding lesson sends the student into the classroom 
with a desirable feeling of confidence and serves to fix that particu- 



87 

lar procedure in his memory as an example of good teaching. The 
conferences where this work is done are of two sorts; the formal 
weekly conference when the work of the preceding week is reviewed 
and plans for the coming week are discussed; and the informal, 
unscheduled, sometimes hurried conferences immediately preceding 
or following a particular lesson. 

3. The critic teachers are unanimous in reporting that the 
method used as far as possible in making the student conscious 
of the defects in his teaching is to stimulate him to self-criticism. 
If the student can be made to be dissatisfied with poor teaching on 
his own part because it is poor teaching and not because the super- 
vising teacher has criticised it, if he develops the ability to know 
when his teaching has been poor, the student, according to the 
theory of most critics, will make improvement. Three critics say 
that students criticise more freely the teaching done when the 
critic is out of the room than that done with the critic present, 
due to the fact that after a lesson so taught they know that they 
are to make a report of the success of the lesson and are consciously 
placed in the position of being their own critics. Within such 
limits as the welfare of the pupils will allow, and with student 
teachers of proved ability and honesty, this method is worth at 
least occasional use. 

4. As a valuable supplement to self-criticism, criticism by 
fellow students is mentioned by four training-school teachers. The 
following quotation from the statement made by Miss Gilberta 
Coffman, fifth-grade critic teacher at Charleston, Illinois, describes 
the plan: 

"The best results are obtained, usually, from group work. 
Several student teachers are assigned to the same subject. One 
of the group teaches for the others to observe. Then, in the con- 
ference, the students take the leading part in the discussion. Just 
as pupils care most for the opinion of their classmates, so student 
teachers are more keenly alive to estimates — approval and disap- 
proval — made by fellow students." 

5. In the general weekly conference at which the critic 
teacher meets with all of her group of student teachers the fol- 



88 

lowing things are mentioned by one or more critic teachers as 
being done: 

a) Methods of teaching are discussed. 

b) Faults of teachers are discussed without personal men- 

tion being made of any student who is guilty of the 
fault in question but with direct bearing on work done 
during the preceding week. 

c) Certain excellencies of teaching are discussed and illus- 

trated, when possible, by mention of a piece of work 
done by a member of the group. 

d) Keports are made by students on reading done in the 

field of education; new assignments for reading are 
made; bibliographies of available material in the dif- 
ferent fields in which the students are working are 
given and are added to by the students themselves. 

e) Occasionally the conference hour is devoted to the teach- 

ing of a lesson by the critic and its discussion by the 
group. This is done more often as an addition to the 
conference hour than as a substitute for it. 

f) Problems of the school and of particular pupils are dis- 

cussed for the purpose of making student teachers feel 
that the important thing in the school is the progress 
of the pupils rather than their own progress. 

6. Criticism of the students' teaching is based as far as pos- 
sible upon the effect which it has upon the children taught. Miss 
McClesky, critic of the second and third grades in the West Texas 
State Normal College writes: "I try to keep clearly before the 
student teacher that it is the pupil and not herself who is the im- 
portant factor. My suggestions are made largely through ques- 
tions. " 

7. The student teacher is helped to improve his work during 
the class period while he is teaching. An upper-grade critic in the 
normal school at Platteville, Wisconsin, suggests that a critic teacher 
may often set right a class exercise that is going wrong in the 
hands of a student teacher by asking a single question of the 
pupils ; that she may relieve some difficult situations, showing how 



89 

such situations are to be handled, by a simple suggestion to the 
teacher or to pupils. This helpfulness on the part of the critic 
during the progress of the recitation is outlined by Miss Edith 
Began, eighth-grade critic at the Eastern Illinois State Normal 
School : 

"There is occasional participation by the teacher with the 
pupils in the recitation being conducted by a student. This is de- 
signed to create a desired atmosphere which the student may be 
unable to establish because of undue timidity. The critic enters 
into the recitation with suggestions and even directions which the 
teacher needs at the moment to brace him. Pupils of the class 
are not led to recognize the interruption as a guidance, however. 
My motive is explained later to the student in conference. The 
student has a definite illustration of some lesson difficulty and its 
solution. This method is used infrequently." 

7. The critic teachers often teach for the student teachers 
whenever they feel that they can show more clearly than by other 
methods of supervision, how a certain thing should be done. Prin- 
cipal F. S. Hyer of the training school at the Wisconsin State 
Normal School at Stevens Point says : 

"If we think it will be most helpful to the student teacher, we 
take the class for her for two or three days and permit her to ob- 
serve. I have always insisted that the practice teacher has the 
right to say in answer to criticism. 'Let me see you do it\" 

8. Student teachers are kept continuously informed as to 
the strong and weak points in their work and of their progress in 
improving their teaching. Charts and score cards, which will be 
discussed in detail in the next section, are used to give this infor- 
mation. Such a score card, designed to give a graphic record of 
teaching ability, used in the West Texas State Normal College, is 
reproduced below. Dr. Garth reports that students are eager to 
see these charts each week and that they make particular effort to 
correct the weaknesses as shown by the chart. It represents an 
ingenious and useful means of making operative the Law of Effect 
in modifying bonds which have to do with the very complicated 
business of teaching. 



90 



FOR RATING STUDENT TEACHERS. 



Student Teacher. 
Subject. 



Class . 
Date. . 



A 


B 


c 


D 


E 


F 








i 




Health 



























Self-reliance 
















.... 





















Teaching skill 









































. i . . . . 






.... ---- 


.... 








Following suggestions 

































Preparation 












- 










Lesson plans 




1 








Community interest 




........ 








Cooperation 














1 

! 








Average 



Name of Observer. 



Best Poorest 

TO THE CRITIC TEACHER: 

One report on each student teacher 
should be handed in every week to 
the Director of the Elementary School. 

There has been relatively little exchange of ideas on methods 
of supervision of teachers among persons engaged in supervision 
in the United States. Certain persons qualified to judge believe 
that nothing is less well done in American public-schools than is 
the supervision. If any persons in the country do know how 
to be helpful to young teachers it is the critic teachers in the 
normal schools. If all that they know, collectively, could be got 
together it would make a treatise of inestimable value on how to deal 
with teachers in such a way that their teaching would be improved. 
Some agency for mobilizing this knowledge of the technique of 
supervision should be set in motion. Probably no collection of 
data would give larger returns in making available valuable sug- 
gestions for the improvement of instruction in our public schools. 



91 



VI. 

THE GUIDING PURPOSES OF TRAINING 
DEPARTMENTS. 

A normal-school organization must have as a guiding purpose 
in the experiences to which it exposes its students, very definite 
ideas of what it is proposed to do for those students. A general 
purpose, unanalyzed into more immediate aims, has little value 
for guidance, particularly when the general purpose is the prepara- 
tion of so complex a product as a "good teacher." 

The definition of aims of education on all levels is an es- 
sential step in making the educative process effective. The general, 
summarizing aim of the whole process must be and is being differ- 
entiated into particular aims toward whose accomplishment par- 
ticular school experiences are directed. 

The purpose of this section is to discover what the aims are 
which the training departments of normal schools are designed to 
accomplish; what the purposes are which guide their organization 
and their work. 

Two methods have been employed to discover what the pur- 
poses of training departments are. First, statements made in 
catalogs and bulletins have been examined. As is to be expected, 
the aims stated are of a very general sort. A single quotation will 
give an adequate notion of the character of these statements. 
The quotation is taken from the Normal School Quarterly of the 
Western Illinois State Normal School, March, 1914, page 6. 
"In the development of the normal school, the Training School 
serves a threefold purpose, namely: 

"1. An opportunity for training students who have sufficient 
foundation in the practical work of the schoolroom, giving them 
practice in the solution of the daily problems of teaching and man- 
agement, under the supervision of expert training teachers in co- 



92 

operation with teachers expert in subject matter and the pedagogy 
of the special subjects. 

"2. In this department are tested the validity and efficiency 
of methods and conclusions developed in other departments of the 
Normal School. The department serves, therefore, as a testing 
laboratory for the products of the institution and assures a line 
of work designed to meet practical and practicable needs. 

"3. The Normal School stands for advanced thought in edu- 
cation. The Training School serves as a kind of educational ex- 
periment station for investigation and research, where advanced 
thought may take concrete form and where both children and 
student teachers may derive the benefits of all improvements and 
advances in school work. 

''While existing solely as a functional part of the Normal 
School in realizing the preparation and training of teachers for 
the public schools, the most fundamental factor in determining 
the character of the Training School is to make it a school typical 
of the school needs of its environment." 

An attempt was made to find to what extent training schools 
are meeting the purpose of serving as research laboratories by 
asking presidents of normal schools and directors of training 
schools the question: "What experiments have been carried out 
in your training school and where are the results published?" Of 
the fifty-four replies received to some or all of the questions asked, 
thirty-six included replies to this question, of which ten were 
"none"; eight training school directors enclosed reprints of ar- 
ticles published; the remaining eighteen replies were to the effect 
that, while the training school was used constantly in experiment- 
ing in methods of teaching and classroom management, none of 
the results had been of sufficient consequence to warrant publica- 
tion. Of the eight articles submitted as evidence of experimenta- 
tion only one showed that data had been obtained by the use of the 
training school for laboratory purposes. 

Evidently, then, it is not so fundamental a purpose of the 
training school to serve as a research laboratory as to serve as a 
laboratory in which the student verifies his educational theory as 
he verifies his principles in physics and chemistry in the science 
laboratories. The training school as a laboratory is a teaching and 
testing laboratory rather than a research laboratory. Its success 



93 

in accomplishing its purpose as a teaching laboratory must be 
estimated by determining the vocational efficiency of the student- 
teacher, which is also the test for the success of the training de- 
partment in accomplishing the first of the three aims. 

The second investigation of the aims of training departments 
was made by gathering detailed statements as to the qualities which 
these departments look for in their product, — the qualities of 
teaching merit which are considered in grading student teachers. 
This represents a fair basis for judging what the aims of the train- 
ing departments are. In spite of the difficulty of analyzing the 
qualifications of a good teacher and the greater difficulty of select- 
ing those characteristics which can be developed by education and 
training, and in spite of the necessity for holding such an analysis 
subject to frequent change, a normal school, and in particular the 
training department, must have a very definite program of the 
particular aims, in terms of items of teaching merit, which are 
to be accomplished during the time that the student attends the 
normal school. This program must serve both as a guide to im- 
mediate procedure and as a standard by which to judge the success 
of the procedure. 

The persons in the normal school who are probably most 
keenly alive to the qualities which are essential in a good teacher 
are the director of the training school and the critic teachers. It 
is their task to take students, with whatever teaching skill they 
may have when they come to the training school, with such equip- 
ment of technical knowledge and of personal traits as make the 
development of farther skill possible, and to increase that teaching 
skill by putting the students into situations that will stimulate 
and foster real growth. 

Data for the study have been collected both from directors of 
training departments and from critic teachers. Definite statements 
have been received from persons in twenty-three schools as to the 
qualities which are taken into consideration in grading the work 
of student teachers. From eighteen of these twenty-three schools 
score cards or report blanks have been received, which are used in 
reporting grades and progress. 



94 

The number of items used in these analyses of teaching ability 
varies from seven to forty-nine. Three include figures indicating 
the weight attached to each item. The number of items included 
probably does not indicate an attempt at a total analysis of teaching 
ability on the part of the school using any one of the lists, but 
probably represents a compromise between such a 'complete list and 
a list sufficiently brief to be easily usable. Such a compromise is 
very difficult to make. A. C. Boyce, in the study published in the 
Fourteenth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of 
Education, Part II, says: 

"In response to the demand for brevity the list may be made 
very short, in which case in order to cover the ground, the terms 
have to be very general. The value of the terms in analyzing the 
teacher and her work becomes less as the terms become more gen- 
eral and more inclusive. The need is for terms which are definite 
and precise." 1 

In the list which Boyce produced as the result of his study 
are included forty-five items classified under five general heads, 
two of the forty-five items having to do with the teacher's relation 
to the community and being therefore not easily applicable to the 
grading of teachers in training. 

Elliott's score card "A Provisional Plan for Measuring the 
Merit of Teachers" includes fifty-two specific items, three of 
which, having to do with community relationships, would not be 
applicable to teachers in training. 

The score card issued by the New York Bureau of Municipal 
Eesearch for the use of supervisors and surveyors of schools in- 
cludes ninety-three items. 

A score card proposed by F. C. Landsittel, of Ohio State Uni- 
versity includes five main headings, called major traits, with 
twenty-nine subheads, called minor traits among which are dis- 
tributed 1,000 points indicating the weight attached to each. 2 
Sprague's "Score card for rating student teachers in training and 
practice" has sixteen items arranged under four general headings. 
The list, with the weight attached to each item is as follows : 3 

1 Fourteenth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Educa- 
tion, Part 2, p. 17. 

2 Educational Administration and Supervision, June, 1918, p. 304. 

3 Pedagogical Seminary, March, 1917, p. 78. 



95 

I. PREPARATION 200 

1. Lesson plans 95 

2. Daily or weekly plans 50 

3. Use of course of study 55 

II. TEACHING SKILL 360 

1. Stimulation of interest 90 

2. Thought and response 85 

3. Drill 55 

4. Economy of time 55 

5. Results 75 

III. CLASSROOM MANAGEMENT 230 

1. Organization of class 60 

2. Care of room 45 

3. Discipline 90 

4. Clerical work 35 

IV. PERSONAL FITNESS 210 

1. Physical 60 

2. Progressive 50 

3. Manners and morals 45 

4. Social fitness 55 

Sprague lists six reasons for the use of such a score card in 

the training school : 

"1. An analysis is presented of the qualities necessary for suc- 
cessful teaching and of the relation of these qualities to one 
another. 

2. In the hands of student teachers this analysis will tend to 

promote self criticism and self improvement. 

3. In the hands of critic teachers this analysis will tend to pro- 

mote their comprehensiveness of judgment in rating stu- 
dents' teaching efficiency. 

4. This outline may he used by critic teachers as a score card 

for rating student teachers in such a manner as to give a 
reasonable proportion of credit to each of the fundamental 
qualities. 

5. These ratings should designate points of strength and weakness 

in the student's teaching and should therefore prove valu- 
able in guiding the principal, the supervisors and the critic 
teachers in their constructive work with the student teacher. 

6. The records on the score card may be used as a basis for recom- 

mending graduates for appointments." 1 
To this summary of advantages arising from the use of such 
a score card should certainly be added the fact that it serves to 
define the purposes of the normal school as a whole and as a means 

»Ibid, p. 72. 



96 



of checking up the success of the curriculum and of the teaching 
in the school as a whole in accomplishing their purposes. 

The least elaborate score card received from the eighteen 
schools furnishing data for this study contain the following items : 

Preparation 

Presentation 

Questioning 

Assignment 

Lesson plans 

Initiative 

Discipline 
The card calls for rating in four degrees of excellence for each 
item: F=Fair; I=Improving; S=Strong; W=Weak; and con- 
tains a ruled space in which percentile total grades are to be re- 
corded each week for ten weeks and a graph of teaching progress 
made. This is the card used at Stevens Point, Wisconsin. A score 
card used at Canyon, Texas, providing for rating in eighteen items 
and the graphing of the score is reproduced on Page 90. 

The card containing the largest number of items is that used 
at Macomb, Illinois, reproduced below. "Average power" is not 
marked; superior is marked x or xx; inferior, — or . 



NATIVE POWER: 

Health and energy 

Voice and enunciation 

Neatness in work and dress 

Knowledge 

Use of English 

Manner and poise 

Confidence 

Attitude toward criticism 

MANAGING POWER: 
Routine management 
Leadership 
Influence 

Attitude toward children 
Discipline 

LOGICAL POWER: 

Amount of preparation 
Clearness of aim 
Organization of subject matter 
Mechanics of plan making 



Responsibility 

Adaptability 

Willingness 

Cooperation 

Enthusiasm 

Force 

Persistence 



Decision 
Consistency 
Tact 
Self-control 



Originality 

Thoroughness 

Appreciation of relative values 

Ability to judge recitation 



97 

TEACHING POWER: 

Attention and interest Use of child's experience 

Right motives Reaching individual 

Method of presentation Securing and fixing results 

Care of child's English Guiding the child's thoughts 

Appreciation of child's difficul- Assignment 
ties 

POWER OF ACCOMPLISHMENT: 

In terms of course of study In terms of recitation 

Children's motives Self activity 

Habits Abiding interests 

Social efficiency 

The following total list of one hundred one items is made up 
of all the qualities mentioned by the twenty-three schools report- 
ing; (eighteen printed or mimeographed score cards; five lists 
furnished by presidents or by directors of training). Where items 
differently named clearly referred to the same quality of teaching 
merit only one name has been used. The figures after each item 
indicate the number of schools reporting that item as one which is 
considered in grading the student teacher. The classification used 
is that of Boyce's list already referred to and involves some re- 
arrangement of items appearing on score cards which classify the 
items. The totals for the headings are the totals of all schools 
mentioning any item among those headings and of those using the 
heading or its equivalent as one item without analysis. In com- 
bining items under a single designation when they seemed to mean 
the same thing, error has been made on the side of including in 
the list terms which overlap rather than in combining items which 
may possibly mean different qualities. This for the reason that the 
purpose in making the list is to show in detail all the qualities 
which are considered in estimating teaching merit. If the list 
were to be made the basis for a new score card, effort would have 
to be expended to effect some combination of overlapping items. 
But in making such a score card the easy use of the card would be 
hampered by the detail of the analysis rather than its effectiveness 
reduced by failure to make so complete an analysis as is possible of 
all distinguishably different qualities which contribute to teaching 
efficiency. Some of the items included are of but doubtful value 
— 7 E S N 



98 



because they represent qualities which could not be properly 
evaluated by any known means; for example, "good judgment" as 
a general trait. Some could well be regrouped under larger head- 
ings, as knowledge of spelling, of arithmetic and vocabulary under 
scholarship. 



I. PERSONAL EQUIPMENT— 23. 

Health 10 

Energy, vigor 7 

Voice 11 

Enunciation 2 

Manner, courteous, pleasing, 

dignified 8 

Poise, bearing 7 

Confidence 5 

Attitude toward criticism, 

ability to profit by it 8 

Responsibility, dependability... 8 

Adaptability 3 

Willingness 1 

Cooperation 4 

Enthusiasm, animation 7 

Persistence, staying power 2 

Tact 7 

Self-control 3 

Initiative 3 



Neatness in dress and personal 

appearance 12 

Facial expression 2 

Open-mindedness 3 

Promptness 4 

Resourcefulness 2 

Naturalness 2 

Sincerity 2 

Sympathy 5 

Practical 1 

Personal habits 1 

Leadership 2 

Patience 2 

Courage 2 

Not fault-finding 1 

Optimism, cheerfulness 3 

Loyalty 1 

Industry 2 

Attitude toward superiors and 

colleagues 3 



II. SOCIAL AND PROFESSIONAL EQUIPMENT— 20. 



Knowledge, scholarship 14 

Use of English 9 

Professional interest, attitude, 

spirit 9 

Ability to follow directions.... 2 

Intelligence 2 

Insight into school problems... 2 

Moral worth and influence 5 

Capacity for growth 6 

Thoroughness 3 

Accuracy 2 

Ability to judge recitation 1 

Community interest 2 

Appreciation of child nature... 2 

III. SCHOOL MANAGEMENT— 23. 

Discipline 17 

Attitude toward children 5 

Management of materials 4 

Care for conditions of room... 3 
Attention to posture of children 1 
Routine 1 



Mastery of methods 1 

Ability to supervise play 1 

Quick thinking 1 

Good judgment 1 

Informed as to good methods.. 1 

Culture, refinement 3 

Pleasure in work 3 

Handwriting 2 

Silent reading 1 

Arithmetic 1 

Vocabulary 1 

Interest in pupils' out of school 

activities 1 

Social disposition 1 



Economy of time 1 

Decision 1 

Firmness 1 

Consistency 1 

Producing good spirit in school 
when in charge 1 



99 

IV. TECHNIQUE OF TEACHING— 23. 

Clearness of aim 5 Appreciation of child's difficul- 

Originality 5 ties 1 

Organization of subject matter 6 Use of child's experiences 2 

Arousing interest and atten- Care of child's English 2 

tion 9 Right motives 1 

Reaching individual pupil 5 Good drill 2 

Mechanic of plan making 9 Fidelity to plan. 1 

Assignment 6 Skilful methods of presentation 8 

Skill in questioning 8 Appreciation of relative values 3 

Skill in illustrating 2 Stimulating appreciation 1 

Daily preparation 8 Teaches how to study 2 

Guidance of child's thought .... 1 

V. RESULTS— 8. 

In terms of course of study 1 In terms of recitation. , 2 

Children's notives 1 Self-activity of children 1 

Habits of children 1 Abiding interests 1 

List of sixteen results from project teaching 1 

The outstanding fact brought out by this list is the wide di- 
versity of factors which are taken into consideration in grading the 
work of student teachers. In one school but one factor under 
personal equipment, that of initiative, is considered. In another, 
eight out of eighteen qualities considered belong under the heading 
of personal equipment. 

A second fact is the lack of analysis of certain factors. In 
seven cases teaching skill is on the list of items upon which the 
teacher is to be graded but is completely unanalyzed. Personality 
is listed in nine cases with no analysis. Results are unanalyzed in 
six of the eight cases where they are mentioned at all. 

The small consideration given to results is surprising. The 
final criterion of good teaching must be the results which it pro- 
duces. When school systems are surveyed, quality of teaching in 
the system concerned is measured practically entirely by the results 
as revealed by standard tests given to pupils. If a complete 
analysis of the results which teaching may be expected to produce 
could be made, and the amount of those .results in the children 
under a teachers care measured and compared with the amount of 
progress which they are capable of making, no other measure of 
teaching ability would be needed. 

In the case of the survey of a large school system, the number 
of pupils tested is so large that normal distribution of pupil ability 
may be assumed and results of tests given in the system compared 



100 

directly with standard scores. In the case of the practice teacher, 
the group dealt with is so small, the time that the group is under 
the care of the practice teacher is so short, that complete depend- 
ence cannot be placed upon results as a measure of teaching effi- 
ciency. But certainly more consideration should be given to 
results than the returns from these twenty-three schools indicate 
is being given, both as a means of estimating the ability of the 
teacher in the most objective fashion possible and as a means of 
directing the attention of the student teacher to the importance of 
results as a criterion for estimating teaching success. 

The results considered need to be carefully analysed. Eesults 
in terms of the accomplishment of the aim of the particular recita- 
tion can be judged by a competent observer with some degree of 
accuracy, in the absence of any objective test for measurement, by 
questioning children and by listening to their summaries of the 
facts of the lesson. The results of a series of lessons may be 
estimated by the use of standard tests, so far as results in "Primary 
learning" are concerned, in a number of elementary and high 
school subjects. The results in terms of "Accessory and con- 
comitant learning," which are of at least equal importance, are 
less easy to determine. Just what is meant by these three terms 
will appear from the following quotation form Professor Ivil- 
patrick's description 1 of the project method : 

"Suppose as extreme cases two boys making kites, the one 
with whole heartedness of purpose * * * the other under 
direst compulsion as a most unwelcome task. For simplicity's 
sake suppose the latter under enforced directions makes a kite 
identical with the other. Call the identical movements in the 
two cases the "primary" responses in kite making. These furnish 
the kind of responses that we can and customarily do assign as 
tasks — the external, irreducible minimum for the matter at hand. 
Upon such we can feasibly insist, even to the point of punishment 
if we so decide. Follow now the thinking of the two boys as they 
make their kites. Besides the thinking necessarily involved in the 
primary responses, other thoughts, few or many, will come; some 
perhaps of materials or processes involved, penumbrae as it were of 
the primary responses; others more personal, or by way of com- 
ment upon the process. The penumbrae of the primary we may 

1 Teachers College Record, Sept., 1918, pp. 326-7. 



101 

call the 'accessory' or complementary responses; the others, the 
concomitant' or byproducts of the activity." 

It is difficult to determine in what degree the learning of 
children under the instruction of a given teacher "sprouts sugges- 
tions" for further interesting things to be learned and so leads to 
further unurged learning; in what degree it leads to better atti- 
tudes toward school and teachers, toward learning and proper ways 
of doing things. But the difficulty is no excuse for not trying to 
determine whether these things happen and for not attempting to 
produce teachers under whose care children will make progress not 
alone in the primary learning of the subject-matter of the curricu- 
lum, but also in this accessory and concomitant learning which, as 
Professor Kilpatrick points out, come as a result of the method 
used in attacking the primary problem. It is important that 
children learn to purpose and to plan for the carrying out of their 
purposes, and teachers who have ability so to teach that children 
learn these things, have a -quality of teaching merit which should 
be emphasized in teacher-preparation and recognized in making 
up teaching grades. 

The only school among the twenty-three which takes detailed 
account of these less easily measurable results of teaching is the 
Kansas State Formal School at Emporia. There seven different 
score cards are used for as many different sorts of activities which 
are carried on under the direction of student teachers. One of 
these is an "Observation and score card for project-problem 
instruction" on which sixteen points are listed as follows : 

1. Ability of pupils to work as a social group. 

2. Ability of pupils in planning and outlining projects. 

3. Ability of pupils in raising and stating problems. 

4. Ability of pupils to distribute the work of the project among 

themselves, which is to be done in the following study 
period. 

5. Ability of individual pupils to make reports to the class 

which they have previously worked out in the study period. 

6. Degree of attention and skill of the class in taking notes on 

the report being given by a pupil. 

7. Ability of the class to carry on fruitful discussion and ask 

questions about matters not clear to them. 



102 

8. Ability of the class in giving criticism intended to help the 

pupil reporting. 

9. Ability of the class in summarizing and drawing conclusions 

when all reports of problems or points related to the class 
project by individual pupils have been given. 

10. Ability of pupils in discovering their own needs for skill or 

knowledge of certain technique required to work out the 
project or to solve the problem. 

11. Ability of pupils in planning and in conducting drills or 

work in acquiring knowledge of technique. 

12. Ability of individual pupils in being thoughtfully active 

throughout the recitation. 

13. Ability of pupils to respect leadership in the members of their 

class. 

14. Degree of good leadership developed in the recitation. 

15. Ability of pupils to co-operate freely, helpfully, orderly. 

16. Ability of pupils to criticize each other's work sympathetical- 

ly, and to receive criticism in the right spirit. 

Five of these factors appear in the lists reported by other 
schools. The other six score cards used at Emporia are : 
Observation and score card for general conditions of instruction. 

Fifteen items. 
Observation and score card for teacher activities in the recitation 

period. Ten items. 
Observation and score card for pupil activities in the supervised 

study period. Eleven items. 
Observation and score card for teacher activities in the supervised 

study period. Eight items. 
Observation and score card for drill projects. Twenty-two items. 
Observation and score card for appreciation activities. ISTine items. 

The critic teachers at Emporia are evidently expected to look 
for all of these ninety-one items and to evaluate them in estimating 
the success of the teacher. But when they report on the teacher 
to the head of the training department, they do so on a blank 
which calls for grading the student on twenty-six points, of which 
"results" is not one and among which "personality" appears but is 
unanalyzed, while the "teaching factor" is analyzed into but five 
items. If it be true in any large degree that critic teachers are 
expected to take notice of and give weight to many more items in 
forming their estimates of students' teaching merit than appear on 
the score sheets of the training departments, then the list which is 



103 

given later in this section, based upon the reports of critic teachers 
as to the factors which they take into consideration in grading the 
students' work in practice teaching should be a more valid list 
than is the list made up from the score cards furnished by training 
departments. 

Another surprising omission from this list is the factor of 
ability in self criticism. The nearest approach to such an item 
is "ability to judge recitation" which is reported by one school. 
In view of the fact that critic teachers report that they try to im- 
prove the student teacher's work very largely by stimulating self 
criticism., and in as much as one of the very important ends to be 
accomplished in the professional preparation of teachers is to make 
it possible for teachers to improve in service after leaving the 
normal school, it is clear that considerable weight should be 
attached to this item in estimating the fitness of students to under- 
take independent teaching. 

Lack of ability in self criticism on the part of teachers con- 
tributes to the situation pointed out in section three as arising in 
part from single hour, small group practice teaching, namely, the 
necessity for close supervision of teaching. More attention in 
normal schools to the development of this ability in self criticism 
should help both to solve the problem of reducing the burden of 
supervision, and to extend the time during which teachers in 
service continue to improve their work independently of super- 
vision. 

A factor which might well be more widely emphasized is that 
of economy of time in school management, mentioned in the report 
from one school only. President L. C. Lord of the Eastern Illinois 
State Normal School impresses upon his colleagues and upon 
students that no single thing reduces the effectiveness of a school- 
room on the side of school management more than to have things 
done in thirty seconds which should be done in ten; that prompt- 
ness of movement from seats to blackboard, in passing papers and 
supplies, in responding to signals in general create a schoolroom 
situation which adds to the effectiveness of air work, undertaken, 
and that while a teacher may conceivably secure these outward 



104 

signs of efficiency without securing real efficiency, the correlation 
is, in his observation, in general high. One reason for the presence 
of so large a number of laggards in our public schools may ver} r 
well be the laggardly, leisurely, unbusinesslike way in which work 
is carried out that should be done in prompt, alert, businesslike 
fashion. 

If the frequency of occurrence be a criterion, ability to dis- 
cipline is the most emphasized characteristic of a teacher among 
the qualities considered in normal schools, being reported from 
seventeen of the twenty-three schools as among the factors given 
weight in judging teaching merit. It is somewhat disheartening 
to find that the factor most generally cared for, as indicated by the 
facts collected, is precisely the one in which superintendents find 
normal-school graduates deficient. That it needs especial atten- 
tion is shown by studies made of causes of failure among teachers. 
Such a study of causes of failure among high-school teachers, made 
by Miss Cleda Moses, 1 based upon data collected from school 
superintendents, mentions "Weakness of Discipline" as fourth in 
order of importance, outranked by "Poor instruction," "Weakness 
of personality," and "Lack of interest." In the report of a study 
of causes of failure among elementary-school teachers Littler 
names "Poor discipline" as the most important of ten causes of 
failure, judged from the frequency with which it was mentioned 
by superintendents from which data were collected. 2 Euediger 
and Strayer found the highest correlations between general teach- 
ing merit and particular teacher characteristics to be between 
general teaching merit and instructional skill, correlation -J-.56 
and between general teaching merit and discipline, -$-.5±. 3 The 
failure to make of normal-school graduates good disciplinarians is 
evidently not due to lack of realization by normal-school super- 
visors of the importance of ability to control schoolroom situations. 
A contributory cause for the failure if not the prime cause is to 
be found in lack of experience which is given the students in the 
course of practice teaching in dealing with situations where dis- 

1 Why High School Teachers Fail, School and Home Education, Jan., 
1914, p. 167. 

2 School and Home Education, March, 1914, p. 205. 

3 Journal of Educational Psychology, May, 1910. 



105 

cipline is a problem. Only extended practice periods under average 
schoolroom conditions can afford such experience. 

The factor of "native intelligence" should be more widely 
included in estimating teaching merit in training departments. 
This is a very inclusive term, but such devices as the Trabue com- 
pletion tests and the Binet scale have demonstrated their value 
in estimating the degree in which intelligence, unanalyzed very 
largely, is present in an individual. Normal schools could well 
make use of a variety of such tests in determining the promise 
which each graduating student gives of making a success as a 
teacher, as universities are beginning to make use of them in con- 
nection with entrance examinations and as the Army made use of 
them in classifying men as to probable fitness for different types 
of work. A fruitful field for investigation is that of devising tests 
that will aid in selecting persons of the special mental equipment 
which fits them to become teachers. Such tests would be of value 
not only in grading students at graduation but also in selecting 
students for admission to normal schools. 

The following is a reduced list taken from the total list on 
Page 98. In this list are included only items mentioned by five 
or more persons furnishing information. The number of times 
each is mentioned is indicated. The classification of the list on 
Page 98 is retained: 

I. PERSONAL EQUIPMENT. 

1. Neatness in dress and personal appearance 12 

2. Health 10 

3. Voice 11 

4. Attitude toward criticism and ability to profit by it 8 

5. Responsibility, dependability 8 

6. Manner: courteous, pleasing, dignified 8 

7. Energy, vigor 7 

8. Poise, bearing 8 

9. Enthusiasm, animation 7 

10. Confidence 5 

11. Tact 7 

12. Sympathy 5 

II. SOCIAL. AND PROFESSIONAL EQUIPMENT. 

1. Knowledge, scholarship 14 

2. Use of English 9 

3. Professional attitude, interest, spirit 9 

4. Capacity for growth 6 

5. Moral worth and influence 5 



106 

III. SCHOOL MANAGEMENT. 

1. Discipline 14 

2. Attitude toward children 5 

IV. TECHNIQUE OP TEACHING. 

1. Mechanics of plan making 9 

2. Skilful method of presentation 8 

3. Arousing interest and holding attention 9 

4. Skill in questioning 8 

5. Daily preparation 8 

6. Good assignments 6 

7. Organization of subject matter 6 

8. Clearness of aim 5 

9. Reaching individual child 5 

10. Originality 5 

V. RESULTS (Unanalyzed) 8 

A second attempt to find what the qualities are which are con- 
sidered in grading the work of student teachers was made by 
applying to the persons who actually assign the grades, namely, the 
critic teachers. The application was made through the director 
of training, who in the greater number of cases, assumed that he 
was given the desired information when he sent a score card which 
is used in recording the final teaching grade. The case of Emporia, 
already cited, indicates the degree in which the lists observed and 
scored may vary. The returns from other schools indicate similar 
differences. 

Critic teachers were asked to name in the order of their im- 
portance the factors which they take into consideration in making 
up students' teaching grades. Eeturns were received from 43 critic 
teachers in 8 schools. The states represented are: California, 
Illinois, Massachusetts, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washing- 
ton, and Wisconsin. 

The lists returned were of such varying degrees of detail and 
so many of the teachers sending lists said that they were unable 
to list the qualities in the order of their importance that no direct 
quantitative treatment of the results of the returns is possible. 
The qualities mentioned are listed and classified in the following 
table. Items six and seven under VI were added at the suggestion 
of a critic teacher who examined the list. The list was then sub- 
mitted to eighteen persons, critic teachers either in active service 



107 

or undertaking advance study at Teachers College and intending 
to return to critic work. They were asked to distribute 1000 
points among the items in proportion to their relative importance. 
The figure in the first column after each item indicates the num- 
ber of times each occurs in the returns from the original teachers 
from whose statements the total list was made up. The second 
column shows the median number of points assigned to each of the 
seven main divisions and to each particular item by the persons 
making the distribution. The totals for the medians of the in- 
dividual items do not give the total for the division since it is the 
median of the totals assigned in the eighteen distributions. The 
third column represents these median figures re-translated into 
terms of 1000 points; that is, the figures assigned to the seven 
main headings in the third column bear the same ratio to 1000 that 
the figures assigned in the second column bear to the sum of the 
seven figures, and the figures for the particular items in the third 
column bear the same relation to the total points assigned to the 
group to which each belongs as the corresponding figure in the 
second column bears to the total of the median numbers of points 
assigned to all items in the group. All figures are adjusted to the 
nearest number divisible by five. 

As in making the list from the training-school score cards, the 
effort has been to include all items that might mean a different 
quality rather than to combine all that might possibly mean the 
same quality, since the purpose is not to make a score card but to 
determine the qualities which critic teachers actually do take into 
consideration in grading student teachers, with such index of the 
weight attached to each item as it is possible to obtain. This 
increased the difficulty of distributing points, and the persons 
making the distribution were asked to assign no separate weight to 
an item which they believed to be included under some other, but 
to indicate what the duplication was believed to be. 

In the case of an item which has been omitted by four or more 
persons making the distribution for the reason that it was con- 
sidered by all of the four to be included under some one other item, 
the points assigned to both items in all of the other distributions 



108 



have been included under the more inclusive of the two. The 
table indicates what items have been so combined with others. 
Factors considered by critic teachers in grading the work of student 
teachers with an index of the weight assigned to each. 

I. II. III. 

I. ATTITUDE TOWARD WORK 135 145 

1. Enjoyment of work 2 10 15 

2. Attention to details 3 10 15 

3. Quick to carry out suggestions 2 10 15 

4. Promptness 2 5 5 

5. Careful daily preparation 13 15 20 

6. Readiness to cooperate 5 10 15 

7. Attitude toward profession 25 25 30 

8. Readiness to profit by criticism 6 Included under 9 

9. Ability and anxiety to improve 6 25 30 

II. ATTITUDE TOWARD PUPILS 60 65 

1. Personal interest in pupils 7 30 30 

2. Interest in pupils' activity outside 

of school 2 Included under 1 

3. Ability to get pupils' point of view. .4 20 20 

4. Ability to secure cooperation of 

pupils 5 15 15 

III. SCHOLARSHIP 150 160 

1. Knowledge of subject matter 12 30 35 

2. Breadth of general information.... 3 20 25 

3. Accuracy of information 4 10 10 

4. Grasp of educational problems 1 10 10 

5. Careful and correct English 6 15 15 

6. Ability to judge good teaching 1 15 15 

7. Ability to plan and organize work.. 8 20 25 

8. Ability in self-criticism 3 20 25 

IV. CLASS MANAGEMENT 75 80 

1. Ability to control pupils 10 35 40 

2. Economy of time 2 15 20 

3. Firmness 4 Included under 1 

4. Fairness 3 Included under 1 

5. Care for physical condition of room 1 15 20 

V. SKILL IN CONDUCTING THE RECITA- 
TION 180 195 

1. Good questions, stimulating thought 6 20 25 

2. Adaptation of material to needs of 

class 3 35 40 

3. Use of children's experiences 2 Included under 2 

4. Use of illustrative material 2 15 15 

5. Definite, workable assignments 3 20 25 

6. Ability to get definite summaries 

from pupils 1 15 15 

7. Arousing interest and holding atten- 

tion 6 15 15 



109 



I. II. III. 

8. Definiteness of aim 1 15 15 

9. Ability to clinch important points. .2 15 15 

10. Keeps teacher activity in background 3 25 30 

11. Resourcefulness 5 Included under 2 

VI. RESULTS 180 195 

(Unanalyzed) 7 

1. Increase in pupils' knowledge 2 40 45 

2. Increase of pupils' resourcefulness.. 1 Included under 3 

3. Increase in pupils' self-reliance and 

self-direction 2 35 40 

4. Increase in pupils' ability to attend. 1 15 15 

5. Increase in pupils' self control 1 15 15 

6. Increase in pupils' power of expres- 

sion 35 40 

7. Increase in pupils' interest in learn- 

ing 35 40 

VII. PERSONAL TRAITS 150 160 

1. Alertness 1 Included under 1, 2 

2. Adaptability 4 5 5 

3. Cleanliness 1 Included under 12 

4. Courage 2 Included under 6 

5. Enthusiasm 2 Included under 1, 1 

6. Decision 1 10 10 

7. Expressive countenance 1 Too indefinite 

8. Industry 5 15 20 

9. Initiative 6 10 10 

10. Loyalty 2 Included under I, 7 

11. Manner 8 Included under 14 

12. Neatness in dress and personal ap- 

pearance 13 10 10 

13. Intelligence 2 15 20 

14. Poise and carriage 5 5 5 

15. Presence commanding attention.... 1 Included under 14 

16. Reliability, dependability 8 10 10 

17. Sense of order 1 12 15 

18. Sincerity 3 5 5 

19. Sympathy, gentleness of spirit 9 15 20 

20. Tactfulness 7 10 10 

21. Vivacity 1 Included under 22 

22. Vigor 4 10 10 

23. Voice, pleasing, distinct enunciation 11 10 10 

In the request for data from critic teachers they were asked, 
in case they used the term "personality" to give an analysis of 
the factors which make up personality. All included a list of per- 
sonal characteristics of the sort which make up the total list in- 
cluded under "Personal traits", plus some others such as "moral 
worth," 'such things as help to distinguish one person from an- 



110 

other", "sum of mental characteristics", "spirituality, not neces- 
sarily religious." 

Comments were added in certain cases which indicate that 
the enumeration of personal traits was felt to be inadequate to 
describe personality. One critic teacher says : "I mean that qual- 
ity * * * which causes an 'atmosphere' about the teacher 
which 'radiates' and makes her students feel that she has a finer 
interpretation of life through her experience in the subject she is 
teaching." Another says: "In including 1 'culture' under per- 
sonality I know that I am simply using one very general term to 
describe another, but I know no other word to mean the fineness 
of character which adds itself to, or is the result of scholarship and 
general ability in some people and not in others." A third critic 
expresses the same idea in the comment: "I have named certain 
qualities that make up 'personality' but there is something over 
and above these qualities that enters into it. A person may have 
a number of admirable qualities and yet the combination be in 
some way displeasing, while another with qualities less admirable 
and with far less ability in a number of directions and no greater 
ability in any, may be attractive and pleasing." 

A provisional description of a person with pleasing personality 
might be : one whose virtues and vices are so combined that they 
do not annoy those with whom he comes in contact, and who is 
possessed of some quality which satisfies and pleases. 

The distinction between personality and character is that the 
second involves judgment of personal qualities upon a basis of 
their moral worth; the first upon a basis of whether their com- 
bination is pleasing. The second being a matter of principle and 
the first one of taste, agreement as to what is good character is 
probably easier than as to what is good personality. By the same 
sign, people generally will be more immediately sensitive to the 
first than to the second since judgments of taste are made directly 
while those of principle are made indirectly. 

The guide to the development of personality will have to be 
a list of personal characteristics of a desirable sort with their 
opposites set over against them, together with undesirable mani- 



Ill 

festations of the virtues enumerated and irritating displays of 
deficiencies. The critic teacher, or whatever person bears responsi- 
bility for developing pleasing personality must diagnose each par- 
ticular case in terms of such a list and try, by addition and sub- 
traction of types of conduct, to produce a pleasing result. The 
proceeding will have to be empirical for the present, for no one 
knows just how self-possessed a person may be and in what ways 
he may show it without being irritating; no one knows the ways 
in which sympathy may be shown without being offensive. The 
knowledge of defects of personality and their treatment will have 
to be built up as the knowledge of the symptoms of disease and 
the treatment of disease have been built up by the medical pro- 
fession. The accumulated knowledge in the first case will be as 
voluminous and as useful as it is in the second, and the hope for 
more scientific diagnosis and treatment is equal in the two. 

F. L. Clapp 1 gives the following list as representing the ten 
qualities (in order of their frequency) that represent the com- 
posite judgment of 100 experienced schoolmen as to the compo- 
sition of the "teaching personality" : 



1. 


Sympathy 


6. 


Enthusiasm 


2. 


Personal Appearance 


7. 


Scholarship 




Address 


8. 


Vitality 


4. 


Sincerity 


9. 


Fairness 


5. 


Optimism 


10. 


Reserve or dignity 



Dr. Bagley, in commenting on Clapp's results, suggests an 
answer to the question which troubles critic teachers as to whether 
the factors which enter into personality can be modified and im- 
proved. He says: 2 

"The important results of this study is the evidence that it 
offers against the fatalistic notion that the important factors in 
the teacher's personality are not improvable through the discip- 
line of experience and training. There are undoubtedly some in- 
dividuals who could never improve their manner of meeting people, 
(their 'address'), and there are others perhaps who could never 
make their 'personal appearance' more attractive. Still others, 
it is clear, are natural pessimists, and neither experience nor train- 

1 See Bagley's School Discipline, Ch. III. 

2 Ibid, p. 33. 



112 

ing nor inspiration could transform their gloom and oppression 
into 'optimism' and 'enthusiasm/ Still others are naturally un- 
dignified and can have no commanding influence over their fel- 
lows. They lack 'reserve' and can never create it. Some, too, 
are naturally unfair, or weak in vitality, or deficient in sympathy. 
But after all acknowledgment has been made to the fatalists, it 
must still be admitted that most individuals can change and im- 
prove these various qualities. Knowing what factors 'count' in a 
teaching personality, the beginning teacher, under wise supervision, 
may adopt measures that will work what might seem at the outset 
to be little less than a miracle of transformation. * * * Mr. 
Clapp found very clear evidence that both experience and training 
had a positive effect in improving the 'teaching personality'." 

It rests with the critic teachers to exercise the "wise super- 
vision" which shall assist students in normal schools to bring 
about the modification of peronality which shall fit them for 
teaching. It is a supervision which cannot be successful if it is 
mechanical; which calls for extraordinary resourcefulness on the 
part of the critic teacher. A statement of the manner of such 
supervision is made by Miss Anna Morse, first-grade critic teacher 
at Charleston, Illinois, as a part of her answer to the question as 
to how critic teachers seek to modify and to improve the work of 
student teachers. Miss Morse says : 

"In the few cases where I think I have really done something 
in this regard, it has been because I have had energy, will, feeling 
and persistence in getting near enough to the real life of the pupil 
teacher to make her care (partly because I cared) to grow toward 
her ideals and to raise them in the meanwhile." 

It is the necessity for the combination of traits that Miss 
Morse mentions that makes the position of critic teacher so hard 
to fill satisfactorily. It is the presence of these traits in a high 
degree in the critic teachers which makes the work of the training 
school effective. 



113 



VII. 
SUMMARY. 

The theses established by the material presented are : 

1. Wider and more diversified use of the training depart- 
ments in schools for the professional preparation of teachers is an 
essential step in the professionalizing of these schools. 

2. Integration of the work of the training school with the 
work of other normal-school departments will insure the direction 
of the efforts in all departments to preparation for teaching; will 
afford to students opportunity for types of contact with the training 
school, which will have both immediate value and value as prepara- 
tion for practice teaching. 

3. A detailed analysis of the purposes which training depart- 
ments propose to accomplish is necessary as a source of guidance 
in the work of the training school. 

4. The methods for accomplishing the desired results must 
be devised with due consideration given to the utilization of the 
laws of learning. Particularly must ability in self criticism be 
developed in student teachers that the law of effect may be opera- 
tive in improvement of teaching both in the practice period and 
after graduation from the normal school. 

5. Training-school facilities and organization must be snch 
that wider use is possible and that carefully directed work can be 
carried out. 

Theoretical instruction, however well given, can at best but 
teach about teaching. Only by experiences involving responsible 
activity in teaching situations can teaching skill be increased. 
The theoretical instruction weights the chances in favor of effective 
responses to teaching problems, but the opportunity for multiple 
response under a specialized supervision which shall at once hasten 

— 8 E S N 



114 

successful performance on the part of the student teacher and 
protect the pupils who are in the practice class is a necessary ante- 
cedent to fully responsible, less closely supervised teaching by the 
beginning teacher. 

The danger that constant contact with, the training depart- 
ment may make students "rule of thumb" teachers, doing work in 
a mechanical, unreflective way, is to be guarded against by pro- 
gressive increase of the responsibility carried by the student 
teacher, and a corresponding advance in theoretical knowledge 
which shall make possible the intelligent bearing of new responsi- 
bilities. Insistence that the novice must learn to teach by teach- 
ing does not involve the assumption that no other activity in the 
normal school can contribute to the preparation of teachers, nor 
yet the assumption that every teaching activity can be so definitely 
predicted and prepared for that "training," in its restricted sense, 
can be a satisfactory means of preparing teachers. It does seem 
feasible to insist that certain teacher activities can most econom- 
ically be made largely mechanical, particularly on the side of 
classroom management, not as a first step in mechanizing the whole 
process but to the end that relieved from the necessity for reflective 
attention to such matters of routine, the teacher may have free all 
of his intellectual resources for carrying on the prime business of 
the classroom — instruction— r which can never be mechanized* but 
the ever new problems of whether ^can be prepared for by breadth 
of knowledge of subject matter, by mastery of educational theory 
in its broadest possible aspects, by experience in similar situations 
which have resulted in ease, readiness, and resourcefulness, and 
which have reduced the possibility of faulty modes of attack upon 
a new problem though the precise manner of the right response jhas 
never been worked out because the exact situation has never oc- 
curred. 

So to strengthen the position of the training department 
among the normal-school departments will in no wise weaken the 
position of the other departments. "With the integration of all 
departments, whatever works to the advantage of one will contri- 
bute to the strength of all. Popular interest, national necessity, 



115 

professional attention of a high order, are all uniting to emphasize 
the importance of professional preparation of teachers for public 
schools of all grades. Normal schools have a rare opportunity to 
show themselves professional schools fully alive to the demands 
which they must meet if confidence in their ability to cope with 
the situation is to be maintained. 



VITA 

Lester MacLean Wilson, born December 15, 1886, at Lamar, 
Missouri. 

Academic Training: Public schools of Kansas and Nebraska; 
Park College Acadenry, Parkville, Missouri ; Park College, A.B. 
1906; University of Chicago, A.M. 1909; University of Wisconsin 
1912-13; Teachers College, Columbia University 1918-19. 

Professional Training: Teacher of Science, Wayland 
Academy, Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, 1906-08; Teacher of Psychology 
and Education, Normal Department, University of Porto Eico, Eio 
Piedras, P.R., 1909-12; Assistant in Psychology, University of 
Wisconsin, 1912-13; Teacher of Psychology, Wisconsin State 
Normal School, Whitewater, 1913-14; Teacher of Psychology, 
Eastern Illinois State Normal School, Charleston, 1915- 



